On Friday 15 July I set off at 02:45 hrs to go
to Bahrain to ring terns. I met up with Phil, Nicole, Brendan, Ali, Mahmood,
Ahmed and Abdulqader to go out to the island at 04:00 to ring tern
chicks. We went a few weeks later than normal due to Ramadan so the terns were
larger than we normally handle but we had no problems with this. This is one of
the best days ringing of the year for me and it is amazing to be on an island
full of breeding terns. We arrived at the island at 06:00 hrs and set about
first ringing Bridled Tern chicks. They nest under cover of the vegetation and
are incredibly well camouflaged and sit tight so good eyesight and a lot of
help are required. We do these first as it is extremely hard work and want to
do it in the coolest part of the day before temperatures rise into the 40’s
Celsius. There were four ringers and we ringed well over a hundred Bridled Tern
chicks that was slightly less than normal.
After this we set up our corral to catch Lesser Crested Tern Chicks that
are all gathered together in large crèches of baby terns with hundreds of
adults looking after them. As they are all in large groups we walk the birds
down into our corral and transfer them to large baskets for processing. We
catch lots of birds in a short time and process them as quickly as possible so
they can return to their normal activities. We keep the birds in covered
baskets with a wet towel on top to keep them cool. We ringed 1000 Lesser Crested
Tern chicks and ran out of rings, this being the biggest number of birds we
have ringed in a single day since we started going to the islands. We finished
earlier than normal due to the good number of ringers present and were back in
Bahrain by 14:00 hrs. There were quite a few dead terns on the island with many
young and some adults of both Bridled and Lesser Crested Terns. This indicates
that the breeding season has not been as good as normal and although there were
several hundred Bridled Terns and four to five thousand Lesser Crested Terns
the numbers were down on previous years. We are uncertain as to why there were
so many dead birds.
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| Bridled Tern |
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| Bridled Tern |
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| Bridled Tern |
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| Bridled Tern |
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| Lesser Crested Tern |
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| Lesser Crested Tern |
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| Lesser Crested Tern |
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| Lesser Crested Tern |
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| Lesser Crested Tern |
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| Lesser Crested Tern |
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| Lesser Crested Tern |