First update from the Oystercatcher islands

On the night of 6-7th June we finally took the train from Moscow to Kandalaksha, and on the 8th arrived to this town in the NW corner of the Kandalaksha Bay, the White Sea. The islands here are not only protected as part of the Kandalaksha State Nature Reserve, but are also included in one of the first Russian designated Ramsar sites “The Kandalaksha Bay”.
On the picture you can see the islands at half-tide: the islands closer up are not strictly protected but are included in so called “tourist zone”, kind of the buffer areas for the nature reserve itself. Farther away the group of islands is where we work and live – there is a group of wardens and research staff houses on the larger island with the hill (Ryashkov), and the Oystercatchers are mainly breeding on the islands around and more to the south (left of Ryashkov). This is actually the “best Oystercatcher area” for not only entire Kandalaksha Bay, but for the whole White Sea.

On the 9th June we are transported to the main island – met there by the first A41-yellow Oystercatcher that was individually ringed last year and now has its nest at almost the same spot as last year in front of the houses of research staff, just 3 meters distance.

Obviously the viccinity of people is a safer place – elsewhere on the island the nests are predated by Red Fox and by corvids (Raven and Hooded Crow). Even the nest on unringed pair on the roof of the research staff house (so called White House) did not survive this year – predated before we arrived, and likely by a Raven. Still the breeding of previous 5 years on the roof gave its results – later on 9th June we found one of the offsprings of the “roof pair” – ringed in July 2007 as a chick and re-sighted on the same island this year for the first time ever (A35 formerly red ring, now almost completely worn off and hard to read).


Stories of 10th till today will follow – hopefully GPRS connection just from the island still permits to upload what we want.