This Is Guernsey

By Tim Earl

A wandering albatross off Wollongong, Australia. The birds dive on the bait as fishing lines are laid behind boats, becoming hooked and dragged to the bottom. (0595837)

MUCH of the most exciting bird-watching I have done has involved seabirds.

Watching albatrosses follow the cruise ship I work on, finding the nest of a Sabine’s gull in a frozen pond on Wrangle Island, seeing Wilson’s storm petrels and great shearwaters feeding as humpbacked whales surface with krill pouring from their mouths. All are monumental moments in my mind.

Seabirds are enigmatic creatures. Most come to land only to breed, making vast unseen journeys around the world’s oceans seemingly without effort.

On good days we can sit at Jaonneuse Point and watch birds which breed in the Falkland Islands sail past on their way south.

Sooty shearwaters have flown up the eastern seaboard of South America, through the Caribbean, past New York and across the northern part of the Atlantic by the time we see them.

These migrations will have been largely unnoticed by any other humans.

But, when I return to the Falklands in October, those same birds will be back in their thousands to start breeding in tussock stands on offshore islets. I have seen great rafts of them feeding on shrimps deep under the kelp beds.

Sea-watching – the study of sea birds at sea – is an addictive pastime.

The appeal is easy to see but it requires considerable dedication to start and develop this esoteric form of bird-watching.

Much is done in adverse weather conditions – in Guernsey we hope for a north-westerly blow to push seabirds close to Jaonneuse Point, our main sea-watching site.

The late and greatly respected Guernseyman, Jim Enticott, who became one of the world’s leading seabird experts, discovered the value of this site with Mike Hill in the 1960s.

Indeed, he was watching a (then rare) osprey migrating past the island when the first Cory’s shearwater ever recorded in Guernsey passed underneath the raptor in October 1967.

He became no stranger to rare birds, seeing a soft-plumaged petrel while sea-watching off Blannan Tip, Cape Clear, Ireland, in September 1974.

This was followed by a cruise to Madeira to prove what he saw, but it was 20 years later before his sighting of the petrel was finally accepted as the first record for Ireland.

Albatrosses are easily caught using a huge landing net, says Tim, pictured, but require someone on the boat to hold them for ringing. (0595835)

Jim first visited the bird observatory at Cape Clear in 1965 when he was just 16. He fell in love with the place and honed his impressive seabird identification skills there.

Cape Clear birding legends include his fall from Blannan Tip as a teenager, when he woke up in hospital with concussion but never told his mother.

Seabirds have one thing in common with the fish they depend on: their future is in jeopardy because people do not see them commonly. Out of sight, out of mind, one might say.

The plight of albatrosses came to light partly because of the work Jim did off his adopted home outside Cape Town.

Commercial fishermen use long lines holding hundreds of hooks baited with fish and squid. Wandering albatrosses dive on the baits as these lines are laid behind the fishing boats, becoming hooked and dragged to the bottom.

Jim discovered that thousands of these oceanic wanderers were being killed each year.

Strangely, it is mainly female albatrosses which fish off South Africa. Their mates are left on the nest, incubating eggs or sheltering young chicks.

When the females return to the nest, they take over duties while the males go off feeding, not around South Africa but in Antarctic waters.

Therefore, many males are left sitting on their nests, waiting for life-long mates never to return – because they have been snared by long-line fishermen.

Jim worked on this problem, devising methods of lowering baited lines into the water in a manner which would prevent seabirds from becoming hooked.

Wandering albatrosses are amazing birds with a wingspan of 12-15ft and a beak evolved to tear up squid and dolphin carcasses.

That their deaths should bring such bad luck was immortalised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

At length did cross an albatross,
Through the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name.

‘God save thee, Ancient Mariner!
From the fiends that plague thee thus!
Why look’st thou so?’ – With my cross-bow
I shot the albatross.

The poem goes on to describe calamities which befall the ancient mariner as a result, warning seafarers not to harm albatrosses.

Just what changed among fishermen I wish we knew. That thousands of albatrosses die each year seems of little concern to those who venture on the southern oceans these days.

I have seen very few of these giant seabirds, but on a boat trip out of Wollongong, just south of Sydney, Australia, one ended up in my lap.

The trip is put on by scientists studying the birds which are attracted to the boat by chum: an evil-smelling concoction of fish scraps and oil.

Part of that study involves ringing the birds. They are easily caught using a huge landing net, but require someone on the boat to hold them. Once the scientific laps were full, mine was co-opted and I was left holding the bird with some trepidation.

An experienced handler had needed 120 stitches in four deep gashes across the palm and back of his right hand after an albatross had clamped its beak on it. It had taken 30 minutes to extract his hand.