Testing harness designs for tracking seabirds

Influence of wind on kittiwake Rissa tridactyla flight and offshore wind turbine collision risk

Many new offshore wind farms are planned, but much uncertainty remains in Kittiwake collision risk, which makes decision-making around offshore wind farm development less efficient. Environmental...

The status of the UK’s breeding seabirds: an addendum to the fifth Birds of Conservation Concern in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man and second IUCN Red List assessment of extinction risk for Great Britain

The conservation status of breeding seabirds is updated in this paper, with an additional five (Leach’s Storm-petrel, Common Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Arctic Tern and Great Skua) joining the...

New insights into the migration and wintering areas of Scottish-breeding Arctic Skuas

Arctic Skuas breed in dwindling numbers on Scotland’s northern coasts and islands. The Arctic Skua is the fastest declining seabird species in the UK and has been on the Birds of Conservation...

Does the management of shell fisheries leave food for the birds?

During the 1980s, high fishing mortality of the Mussel stocks led to an almost complete disappearance of Mussel beds in The Wash, with the Mussel fishery closing in 1994. Cockle stocks also...

The value of seabird foraging ranges as a tool to investigate the impact of offshore wind farms

The UK’s seabirds have experienced substantial population declines in recent years, thanks to many pressures including overfishing, climate change, severe weather and most recently, Highly...

Review of the Seabird Monitoring Programme highlights new opportunities

Current annual trend information delivered by the Seabird Monitoring Programme (SMP) is imprecise, absent, or geographically limited for several UK breeding seabird species. It is therefore of high...

Northern Ireland Seabird Report 2023

Synchronous timing of return to breeding sites in a long-distance migratory seabird with ocean-scale variation in migration schedules

Atlantic populations of a declining oceanic seabird have complex migrations and weak migratory connectivity to staging areas

Arctic Skuas are long-distance migrant seabirds that have seen large declines in breeding numbers across areas of the north-east Atlantic. Part of these declines has been attributed to poor food...

Understanding seabird behaviour at sea part 2: improved estimates of collision risk model parameters

Strategic study of collision risk for birds on migration and further development of the stochastic collision risk modelling tool (Work Package 1: Strategic review of birds on migration in Scottish waters)

Leakage of plastics and other debris from landfills to a highly protected lake by wintering gulls

The study, led by the Institut de Ciències del Mar and Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Spain, used diet samples collected in January 2022 at the Fuente de Piedra – an inland lake in Spain...

Challenges in quantifying the responses of Black-legged Kittiwake to habitat variables and local stressors due to individual variation

During the 2021 breeding season, BTO scientists tracked 20 Kittiwakes, fitted with small GPS devices, from Whinnyfold – part of the Buchan Ness to Collieston Coast Special Protection Area – in...

Uncertainty in seabird body size and its implications for studying flight height

Behavioural responses of Sandwich terns following the construction of offshore wind farms

Between 2016 and 2019, BTO scientists fitted Sandwich Terns breeding at Scolt Head Island in Norfolk with long-life GPS tags which tracked the birds’ movements over multiple years. When the...

Future impact of climate change on threatened seabirds

New BTO research predicts seabird declines of up to 90% by 2050 in Britain and Ireland under a ‘business as usual’ climate scenario.

Waterbird News - Issue 39

Flight heights obtained from GPS versus altimeters influence estimates of collision risk with offshore wind turbines in Lesser Black-backed Gulls Larus fuscus

As previous BTO research has shown, bird-borne tracking devices are essential for shedding light on seabird flight behaviour. Different methods for gathering flight height information within tracking...

How do offshore wind farms affect seabird behaviour?

Research reveals a crucial link between wind farm design and Sandwich Tern behaviour in the North Sea.

A crowded ocean: the need for demographic and movement data in seabird conservation

To implement effective conservation actions, locally and globally, we need to quantify the importance of the multiple, often interacting, threats to seabird population growth rates. Population models...