We had the privilege of assisting the seabird research program of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) at the field station at Hernyken off Røst, as they closed the fieldwork for the season in August.
The Puffin (lunde) chicks in the 40 monitored nests had all survived since we left them in July, but growth was quite low. However, the adults came in with good portions of food, and during the first week of August the portions consisted of an increasing amount of mackerel. Young mackerel up to 10 centimetres in portions of 3-5 fish is excellent nutrition for the chicks, and by the last control they had grown by a rate of 9 grams pr. day. This was great news; we estimate that about half of the breeding Puffins will have their chicks successfully out at sea this year. This is the best result in many years for a Puffin population that has decreased over several decades.
Another task of this trip was to try to recapture two Leach´s Storm-Petrels (stormsvale) that was equipped with light level loggers – a device attached to the birds ring that gives geolocation data. We managed to catch three Leach’s Storm Petrels, and to our relief one of them had a logger. The logger was released, data downloaded, and when the data was processed, we got a nice map of the birds whereabouts the last year. It had spent most of the winter off the coast of Namibia, then flew over to Brazil before returning to European waters and eventually back to breeding grounds in the Røst islands.
A regular by-catch is the smaller European Storm-Petrel (havsvale), and out of some 100 birds ringed, we controlled a bird ringed in Portugal.
During seabird fieldwork we always get some surprising visitors, and the highlight this year was two beautiful male Two-barred Crossbills (båndkorsnebb).
A couple of young Kestrels (tårnfalk) paid us a visit.
A juvenile Greater Spotted Woodpecker (flaggspett) also made it all the way out to the treeless island far out at sea.
Now we look forward to September and migratory bird season at Røst. Follow us for weekly updates on our exciting hunt for rare vagrants!