Guillemots at Stackpole Head, Pembrokeshire

At the time of our visit to Stackpole Head in early May the guillemots were gathering ready for the breeding season. This species does not build a nest but lays a single pyriform (pear shaped) egg directly onto the rock ledge. The advantage of an unusually pointed egg is that, if it rolls, it does so in a tight circle and is therefore less likely to fall off the ledge.

In the southern UK the first eggs are laid in mid-May. In the north early June is more typical. Guillemots are communal nesters (and feeders, as the second photograph shows.

Incidentally, the location of the guillemots in the first photograph can just be discerned on the lower right hand edge of the top photograph of the previous post.

photo 1 © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon P900

photo 2 © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Lesser black-backed gull

As a young bird watcher, barely into my teens, I remember thinking it remarkable that there could be a gull that lived its life without seeing the sea. Yet it isn't inconceivable that a lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) might do just that. During the 1960s I remember seeing Britain's largest colony of lesser black- backed gulls nesting on Walney Island on the edge of the Irish Sea. A little later I also saw a nesting colony on the high moorland of the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire. Today the bird can also be found nesting on the roofs of town and city buildings. The bird in the photograph was a solitary individual that had alighted on a large woodland pond in the Forest of Dean.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon P900