Hosted by journalist and broadcaster Jackie Bird, each episode of our Love Scotland podcasts tells some of the thrilling stories behind the Trust’s people and places, showcasing how everything we do is for the love of Scotland.
Seabird survival: battling avian flu
Transcript
Three speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Ciaran Hatsell [CH]
[MV]
Love Scotland, from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.
[JB]
Hello and welcome to Love Scotland. You join me on the shoreline at the St Abb’s Head Nature Reserve in Berwickshire – a picture-perfect spot today. Behind me, a dramatic wall of cliffs. It’s early autumn; there’s a bit of heat in the sun, but those cliffs are quieter than they were a few months ago when tens of thousands of seabirds were nesting there.
But I’m afraid I’m not here to report on a good news story, because St Abb’s Head has been one of the places that’s been affected by the largest avian flu outbreak in British history, as my companion today, ranger Ciaran Hatsell, knows only too well. Ciaran, it’s great to meet you in person!
[CH]
You too, Jackie. Good morning. How are you?
[JB]
I’m well. Now let me give our listeners a bit of a back story. We chatted virtually during some of the darkest days of lockdown, and you painted such a picture of this place that we were planning to meet up again, when the birds were all here, to tell the great story of St Abb’s. That is not how your year turned out. Tell me about it.
[CH]
Unfortunately not. So, normally seabird season is my favourite time of year. The sights, the sounds and the smells on the cliffs are phenomenal. The cliffs are like a football stadium, jam-packed with guillemots all shoulder to shoulder. The noise is phenomenal – kittiwakes cawing away. Thousands of birds. We start in the spring: the nesting for the season, sap starts to rise … and, unfortunately, it turned out to be probably one of my least favourite seabird seasons ever. On 5 June, we had our first case of avian flu.
[JB]
Was that the first inkling that something was wrong or had you heard about other outbreaks?
[CH]
There had been whisperings of St Kilda in the Hebrides, and Shetland were starting to see outbreaks in gannets and great skuas. A bit of a continuation from last year, when there was a very small (or relatively small) outbreak. And from there, really the ball started rolling and never stopped. So yeah, like I said, I’ve never wanted a seabird season to end, but this year I was almost willing them to leave the cliffs and get out. Because in the summer they’re all in one place, packed into the cliffs – it’s basically a mosh pit of disease. They spread it between themselves. Seabirds are gregarious birds; they’re very social. And so, this means that the disease spreads between them very quickly. We weren’t able to lock them down; we can’t put barriers on them.
Unfortunately, it’s not just local here to St Abb’s; the effects were huge here locally but we’re talking about an international issue here. It’s a global issue. This is the biggest outbreak of this strain of avian flu that we’ve ever seen.
[JB]
So, take me back. Tell me when you got an inkling that something was wrong here.
[CH]
On 5 June, I found a dead gannet, which was washed ashore on the rocks, kind of splayed out in a very unnatural place. Death in a seabird colony is part of life, and you get used to it. But this was an adult gannet on the top of the rocks that had basically just come ashore and died. That’s not normal behaviour. And from there, I feared the worst … and the worst hit us.
The gannet population here is very new. This is really exciting news in the seabird world – the chance to study a newly forming colony of any seabird is really unique and quite special. So, I felt really privileged to be able to see it from almost the beginning. Gannets nested here for the first time in 2016, and they were going from strength to strength. This year, we had 109 nests, and sadly we’ve got 1 left. There is still, as of yesterday, one chick that’s getting ready to fledge and it’s nearly reached it. But that’s the last one. The one and only chick that we had out of the 109 nests – and the rest were lost to avian flu and bad weather.
[JB]
And how many gannets would that have been?
[CH]
We lost just under 100 here, but if you look at the Scottish context, it’s well into the thousands. Currently we’re in the quantification stage. Ellie Owen, who is our new senior seabird officer, her and Craig Nisbet who works in St Kilda are currently trying to quantify how many birds we’ve lost on St Kilda. With anything like this, it was a bit of a surprise to happen to the seabirds, because we didn’t really expect it, but now we’re looking to quantify, and we’ve got to play catch-up.
Ellie and Craig are working to quantify what’s happened on St Kilda. Bass Rock, which is just up the coast from here, is the world’s biggest colony – they’ve taken aerial surveys and they are currently in the process of getting a count, to be able to look at a number of how many birds we have actually lost.
[JB]
Have we any idea even at this early stage?
[CH]
Well into the thousands.
[JB]
Tell me about the species affected.
[CH]
I will, yes. The species that have been hit the hardest, probably the two were gannets and great skua. Great skua, for example, are one of the rarest seabirds in the world. The world population is about 16,000 pairs roughly.
[JB]
That’s not much.
[CH]
Now, in Scotland, we’ve got about 60% of the world’s population – just under 10,000 pairs. Great skuas are a bit of a bad guy. They get a bit of a bad press; they eat puffins, some of them. I know, I know. Some of them eat puffins, but they also are one of the most charismatic, enigmatic, brilliant seabirds. They’ve got character – they’ll fight gannets. They’ll smash them into the sea and eat the fish. They’re real fighters; they’re special birds, and in Scotland, like I said, 60% of the world’s population.
Now again, we’re in the quantification stage. We’re trying to work out exactly how many we’ve lost, but we’re well into the thousands. So, the percentage of birds lost – for great skua – we’re looking at potentially a population level event for this species. We’ve never lost them on this scale before.
[JB]
Sorry, when you say a population event, what does that mean?
[CH]
It means that the species were already fairly vulnerable. And now we're looking at this could have a massive knock-on effect. And potentially, we could be looking at localised extinctions of this species in certain areas.
[JB]
And that doesn’t happen these days – or it certainly hasn’t happened to birds for a very long time.
[CH]
No. Disease in wild birds has always been a thing. This strain of avian flu has come from intensive poultry farming basically. One of the most frustrating things is that it’s an anthropogenic cause; it’s something that we have caused as humans. The birds have contracted this disease through no fault of their own and are now spreading it globally. We’re seeing, well, tens of thousands of birds lost across the world just because of what we’ve done.
[JB]
You’ve talked about gannets, skuas, anything else?
[CH]
Kittiwakes and guillemots. Here at St Abbs, probably the most tangible impact was on the guillemots. Guillemots are our most numerous seabird here. They call them the northern penguin. One of the best things that I think you can see in Scotland is the fledgling time for guillemots – it’s what we call jumpling season. The tiny chicks that can be as young as 15 days old will fling themselves off cliffs, hundreds of metres high, straight into the sea. The noise is phenomenal. The adults are calling, trying to encourage the chicks to jump. The chicks are whistling away. It’s like a really piercing whistle. Now, when you get thousands of birds leaving at the same time, the sea’s nice and flat calm, the noise is like nothing you can hear. It’s a cacophony! It’s phenomenal.
[Audio plays of seabirds]
[CH]
Unfortunately, this time of year, we were seeing them jump, but unusually what we were seeing was we were finding a lot of the chicks dead in the water, and really unusual is that hardly any of the gulls were touching them. They weren’t scavenging them at all. There were hundreds; there were piles of dead chicks in the water.
Now, part of my job and the job of a lot of people in conservation, became a kind of dystopian ‘bring out the dead’ situation. Every day I was going out and trying to quantify how many new birds we had dead on the colony. In some areas, I was actually collecting the birds as well. So, you could visit a lovely peaceful nature reserve and you see people in full Hazmat protection suits with masks on, putting dead birds in bin bags. It’s like something out of a film from the future. It’s something that I never thought I’d be doing as a conservationist. It’s not something I ever wanted to do. Everyone who’s in this profession does it for the love. We don’t do it for the money; we don’t do it for the fame. We do it because we’re passionate and we love seabirds and we love wildlife. That’s why we do it. And so, when something happens on this sort of scale, and especially when it’s something that humans have caused, it really affects people.
We were having regular avian flu meetings, and it was great to hear stories from other people and share knowledge and share stories and find out what’s happening elsewhere, because that gave us a real sense of community. It’s easy in these remote locations – places like St Kilda and Fair Isle and some of the other nature reserves like Nos and the Isle of May – it’s easy to feel quite isolated. You’re on your patch and your patch becomes your life, for that short summer season. Now, talking to each other really connected us and the birds connected us, and unfortunately it was in a very negative way, but there are positives that can come out of this. I think it has brought the seabird community in particular closer together. And hopefully, it’ll mean we can work together to try and do our best to combat this in the future.
[JB]
Whenever you were going around picking up dead birds, was there a particular moment for you? What was the worst time?
[CH]
I think probably some of the earlier times, when I was going down to the beaches when it was fresh. There was the first and second day that I found any sort of big numbers. There was over a hundred – 113 guillemots that were just floating in the water, all in one big pile, basically. And it was just, as I was saying before, that fledgling season is so exciting. It’s so exhilarating, and it’s one of my favourite events of the year. And to see the chicks that have put the leap of faith, straight off the cliff into the water, just lying there lifeless was … it was pretty sad.
[JB]
It should have been a celebration of new life. And all it was was death. Tell me, do the birds who have caught avian flu, what are the symptoms that they show?
[CH]
It’s quite varied and this is something that we are all looking into as well. A lot of the time it will be a bit of confusion. They’ll shake their head a lot. I saw birds swimming in circles, so they were often swimming in circles flapping. They were uncoordinated, as if part of the brain wasn’t working properly. I watched a guillemot in the sea – its balance was completely all over the place. It was trying to right itself but kept capsizing and eventually that died within a couple of hours.
Now, one of the fortunate things about avian flu is it seems that it’s a fairly quick death for most birds. They’ll get it, they’ll contract it, they’ll die very quickly – but it doesn’t make it any easier to watch. Like I said, we were going out and doing daily patrols. Something we’re trying to learn actually is the symptoms and how it manifests itself and how it spreads. It’s different for different species. What we think was one of most common factors is that the species that were hit the hardest, they have what we call club sites. It’s a bit of a strange word and it’s quite an appropriate word I suppose, because a club site is a group of non-breeding birds – young birds basically. They will hang around in social places. So, for great skuas, they have these freshwater pools where they all hang around in one place. They’ll bathe, they’ll wash; I wouldn’t say they’ll talk to each other but they’ll socialise. It’s thought that the disease can last in water for up to 200 days. So, for great skuas in particular, for birds that are using these communal bathing pools, it’s thought that these are really a vector of the disease or hive of the disease.
[JB]
I had no idea it could stay in water and especially for that long.
[CH]
It’s thought that salt water should kill it, but fresh water, which some seabirds need for washing and drinking, unfortunately it can hang around in those areas for about 200 days. And that means that it can potentially survive from season to season, and it means that this problem probably isn’t going away anytime soon. But by learning these things, learning the symptoms, learning how it spreads, these are really key things in understanding the disease and then looking at potential ways of mitigation – how we can help, if we can help.
I think that feeling of helplessness actually was something that was quite common. Normally, you feel like you can do something – and for some people picking up the dead birds from around the beaches was something small that we could do. The reason we were doing it is to stop other birds scavenging it and potentially passing it on. That felt pretty much the only thing we could do. There wasn’t really much else we could physically do. So, you did feel a bit helpless, which is very frustrating because we’re used to react to things – and action’s a big part of conservation. We have to take action where we can. But yeah, at this stage, we were just pretty helpless.
[JB]
What do we know about this new strain and how it’s mutated?
[CH]
It was found in the early 2000s; that was when it first manifested itself. It’s thought to have come from intensive poultry, originated in Asia. Now, the way that food production works but also the way that wild bird populations work, once it worked its way into the wild bird population, it was almost impossible to control. We’ve seen poultry places have had to cull thousands of birds in the food production side of things. It’s now looking into pheasants, that they’re potentially going to contract it. I think it’s really time that we looked at the way that we eat, the way that we consume, and the way that we even use our leisure time. We need to think about these activities that are potentially going to cause diseases that are going to affect wild bird populations. I think it’s time for us to really think about everything that we do and how we can help.
[JB]
Well, that actually takes us on to what we’re going to talk about in the second half of this chat Ciaran. So, I think it’s an excellent time to take a break. And when we come back, we will talk about the immediate future – what it holds and what’s being done to try to avert even greater harm in the coming months. We’ll be back in a moment.
[MV]
If you’re a whisky lover, a nature lover, a fun of Burns or a Scottish history buff, there’s an episode of Love Scotland just for you! Head back through our archives to hear the in-depth stories behind Scotland’s history and landscape. Seasons 1–3 are all online now. Don’t forget to review, like and share.
[JB]
Welcome back to St Abb’s Head where ranger Ciaran Hatsell and I are talking about the avian flu outbreak. It does seem a bit odd, Ciaran, to be sitting in this wonderful location with the sea lapping in this bay, ramblers above us, a bit of wind, bit of warm autumn sunshine – talking about such a terrible time that you’ve been having. The bigger picture I suppose is that avian flu is damaging species already under pressure from things like pollution and of course climate change.
[CH]
That’s it. These birds, it’s probably the last thing they need. There’s all sorts of pressures that are put on them. There’s offshore developments. There’s climate change, changing sea temperatures, lack of food. So many things were putting them under strain. So, the very last thing we needed was this … almost, I was calling it bird covid, basically, because that’s the best way that I could describe it to people. It’s swept through wild bird populations in a devastating way. And it was the very last thing they needed.
[JB]
And it’s now moving into urban areas?
[CH]
It is, yeah. Like I said before, you can’t lock birds down. Some of the birds that are here, they’ll migrate to West Africa; some of the birds that are affected, like the terns, will go as far as Antarctica. To birds, the world is a relatively small place; they’ll nip from place to place and not really bother about it. But that also means that they go from place to place and spread the disease, and there’s nothing that we can do to really mitigate against it.
[JB]
So seagulls and raptors in urban areas particularly?
[CH]
The gulls that breed on the coast will often go inland. They’ll go to rubbish tips, where they’ll congregate in the winter and they’ll spread again to places like Africa, Morocco, but in very urban areas. It’s not a risk that is isolated to the coast. Bird flu can be anywhere; it can be in any sort of wild bird population. So yeah, it’s a big risk.
[JB]
And tell me, what is the risk in terms of contagion to humans?
[CH]
It’s thought to be very low. This strain, it has been found to pass to humans but it’s extremely rare. The advice that we give people basically is if you find a dead bird, don’t touch it. You’re supposed to report them to Defra and that means that they can find out how many birds have died in what location – potentially come and test these birds as well. But the main thing is: don’t touch it. Keep your distance from it. Keep your dogs on leads because there have been cases potentially it passing through to canines.
There are also potential cases in grey seals in North America and Canada. It’s thought to have spread into grey seals in small numbers. That’s a big worry for here. The North Sea has been hit massively hard, especially places like the Bass Rock and Shetland. It’s been hit really hard. Now we’re getting towards seal pupping season here, and with the way things have been going with Storm Arwen, with avian flu this summer – I wouldn’t say I’m expecting it to get into the seals, but there’s a bit of foreboding and potential dreading, just hanging in the background, that it could potentially spread into grey seals.
[JB]
It’s a neurological disease so I suppose that makes the symptoms a bit more difficult to detect until they’ve really taken hold.
[CH]
It can be, yes. Obviously, it will affect … the way we were seeing the birds reacting, they were swimming in circles. They were confused and disorientated. Their balance was all gone. So, they can display these signs, but one of the things that we’re looking to do is coordinate our response on this.
The fact that it’s happened is horrendous, but what we can learn from it is potentially really big. Looking at symptomatic birds, sharing knowledge, speaking about it. There’s been the seabird conference in Cork this year, where there was huge lectures on avian flu and how different areas dealt with it. I think that the coordinated response is what’s needed: conservation organisations working together to try and come up with a response. That will help us mitigate as much as we can.
[JB]
There seems to be almost an unprecedented coordinated response to this.
[CH]
Yeah, so at the moment they’re looking at the avian flu task force being set up. That’s initiated by NatureScot but it’s actually involving all organisations. The National Trust for Scotland, we own sites that contain millions of seabirds. We’re potentially on the forefront of this outbreak. And our sites are really important. Our people on the ground are the people who are going to gather the data; they’re the people that are going to help learn about this, and help quantify what’s actually happened.
[JB]
What I don’t understand is when I was working in news a few years ago and there was a single bird in Cellardyke in Scotland, and I was sent out there to cover it – it was banner headlines. This terrible outbreak seems to have flown under the radar.
[CH]
It does a little bit. I mean, I think we’ve so much else going on in the world, in the chaotic world that we live in. I think it did take the background a bit, and I’ve met people who’ve said ‘I’ve not really heard about it’. On the flip side, a lot of our visitors seem to be fairly well-informed. They were coming and asking. One of the first questions they asked was oh, how has the avian flu been here? How has the outbreak been locally for you guys?
It’s a difficult one really. I think it depends what kind of information you choose to absorb. I suppose, what websites you go to, what news outlets you follow. It got covered in small bits. The St Kilda outbreak was massive, in great skuas and gannets. They tried to do a bit of media coverage of that, but I think it’s something we should be talking about. People should know about these things. We need the good and the bad in equal measure. These bad news stories are unfortunately more common.
It seems to be a common theme in conservation. Although the good news stories, we try and cling to and shout about as much as we can, unfortunately we need to give light and dark a bit of equal coverage really.
[JB]
I think it’s possibly because, as you said earlier, risks to humans are very, very rare but the impact on the greater biodiversity must be something to be concerned about in the future.
[CH]
It’s massive. We look to seabirds as biological indicators of the health of our habitats. They’re a really good barometer for how the ocean’s doing, for example. If seabirds are thriving, we know that the food source is ok. It’s a very complex thing but there’s a lot we can learn from seabirds. Now, the fact that these apex predators are declining in massive numbers, especially great skua – the great skua is probably the one that I’m most worried about. I think that’s one that I’ve heard people say because they’re the bad guys, because they’re the pirates of the sea, I’ve heard people say, ‘oh, that’s great the populations are declining, so these species will do better’. That’s not how ecosystems work. I think they get a really bad press and I’m worried.
This season, in the autumn we look for passage seabirds out to sea. In the early mornings, I’ll be out with a telescope looking for birds like Manx shearwaters that winter in Brazil, and all the different skuas that are flying past us and winter all around the world. And great skuas, I’ve seen a handful this autumn; normally you’d be seeing hundreds. So yeah, the scale that we’ve lost this species in particular is really really concerning. In this age of biodiversity crisis and species loss, I am worried that this is going to be a species that we may potentially lose in the next 20/30 years.
[JB]
Oh dear. What about restrictions for visitors? We hear some visitors today. It’s going to be a lovely day. There have already been restrictions in other sites. So, what about here?
[CH]
For here, fortunately, most of the seabirds are on inaccessible offshore stacks. There’s a reason that they’re nesting here: it’s because people and predators can’t get to them. When we’re on site, one thing I was trying to do was clean up the corpses. I was going around in full PPE cleaning up the dead birds, so that was dual purpose – it was to stop it spreading between species, to stop it getting to freshwater places, but also to make sure that people weren’t at risk as well. People who were walking the dogs, we don’t want the dog grabbing a dead bird and ingesting it at all because it’s potentially dangerous.
With regards to restrictions here at St Abb’s, we didn’t have many. It’s an open access site and it wasn’t too bad, but one of the main reasons that some of the islands were shut, for example, was to stop people walking through the colonies for risk to themselves, but also it is a stress reducer.
When people are walking through seabird colonies, they do cause a certain amount of disturbance and stress on these birds. Now, anything that we could potentially do to limit that and reduce that stress was one of the reasons that some of the islands were shut, just to stop people and reduce the extra stresses and pressures that were already on seabirds while they’re going through such a difficult time.
[JB]
Ok. I feel this is very doom and gloom. I’m searching for a light at the end of the tunnel. The scientists are clearly doing their thing. I read something the other day that they have spoken about trying to get ahead of the outbreak, whatever that means. What’s your best guess? Do you think the birds could develop some resilience or resistance to this?
[CH]
So, the good news is that not all the birds are dead, basically.
[JB]
Ok, let’s grab hold of that.
[CH]
Let’s get hold of that. When we started this season, before the outbreak here got very bad, we were looking at population increases this year for most species. We were looking at a really positive picture. I was very happy. The populations looked healthy; what we call the productivity – how many birds fledge per nest – was looking really positive as well.
Now, when we started losing birds, I was thinking the worst. I was thinking, well, that’s it now; it’s a complete washout. Later in the season, we were seeing hundreds, if not into the thousands, of young kittiwakes, on the water that had fledged. They had a really, really good season, and kittiwakes are one of the species that are really on the brink. They’ve struggled in the last 30 years; we’ve seen around an 80% decline here. But if you look at the 10-year picture, we’re starting to see a slight upturn in the population.
So, there is light at the end of the tunnel; there is hope for some species. This disease is not going to go away overnight. We’ll do our best to monitor it and stay on top of it. But yeah, I think we’ve got to try and remain positive because if it is just all doom and gloom, then what have you got? Nature’s one of the most uplifting and brilliant things that any of us can get involved in and immerse ourselves in. So, I think we need to … You can still go out and see thousands of seabirds here at St Abb’s. There is that twinge in the background, what’s going to happen next year. But we’ll just wait and see.
[JB]
Brilliantly summed up. An optimistic note. Ciaran Hatsell, thank you very much.
[CH]
Thank you.
[JB]
And if you’d like to find out more about the avian flu outbreak and how it’s affecting specific National Trust for Scotland sites around the country, visit the website or follow the link in our show notes. There, you can also find more advice on what to do should you find a dead or dying bird including a reminder not to approach it and to report it to the government helpline. That’s 0345 933 5577. I’ll give you that number again. That’s 0345 933 5577.
Thank you for listening to this Love Scotland podcast. I hope that when I’m next back here with Ciaran, it will be for happier news.
[CH]
Absolutely, you’re welcome anytime, Jackie.
[JB]
But from us, for now, bye-bye.
[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.
In this episode, Jackie is at St Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve in Berwickshire to meet ranger Ciaran Hatsell. They discuss bird flu in Scotland, as the UK’s worst ever avian flu outbreak leaves thousands of seabirds dead.
Ciaran reveals its impact on St Abb’s Head and explains how the virus first took hold on the cliffs. Plus, Jackie asks how Ciaran and his colleagues are working behind the scenes to better understand the virus and protect other birds from the outbreak.
If you come across a dead or dying bird, do not touch it. Instead, report it to DEFRA on 03459 335577, and report it to a member of National Trust for Scotland staff if you’re at one of the sites.
Whenever making a visit to an area affected by the virus, keep your distance from birds, use disinfectant when you arrive and when you leave, and sanitise your hands before eating, drinking, or smoking. The risk to human health is very low.
More information on how the virus is impacting National Trust for Scotland sites
This podcast was released in October 2022.
Avian flu: a report from the front line
Transcript
Three voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Ciaran Hatsell [CH]
[MV]
Love Scotland – brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland, presented by Jackie Bird.
[JB]
Hello. It’s summer and we’re at the seaside, to be precise at St Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve in the beautiful Berwickshire Borders. This area is stunning. It is a beautiful day – blue sky and blue sea. It’s famed for its dramatic cliffs and of course its seabird colonies. Indeed, Scotland, as you may well know, is one of the best places in Europe to get up close to these marvellous creatures. More than a million breed on Trust properties in various locations, including St Abb’s, on islands like St Kilda, Canna, Staffa, Mingulay – to name a few.
However, we’re here to record an unscheduled episode of the podcast. It’s late July, and a few weeks ago another outbreak of avian flu hit the headlines. Now, St Abb’s was very badly hit last year, so we wanted to get back on the ground and let you know what was happening this time. I’m joined again by a familiar voice to many of you: the head ranger here, Ciaran Hatsell. Hello, Ciaran.
[CH]
Hello, Jackie.
[JB]
We are nestling behind a very small building. We’ve got a beautiful view in front of us. The wind noise is pretty bad, but I think we’ve managed to find some shelter.
[CH
Yeah, we’ve found one of the rare quiet spots and very sheltered spots on the reserve, because there’s been a bit of a northerly wind and the sea is full of white horses – and looking dramatic and beautiful as usual.
[JB]
July in Scotland. I’m afraid the beauty of the scenery belies a much darker story. Lovely to see you again. We spoke earlier in the year about the horrendous year you’d had last year with avian flu. We thought we’d escaped; it didn’t happen. Tell me the story.
[CH]
It didn’t. So, obviously last year was a really tough year for seabirds, not just here at St Abb’s but around Scotland and around the world as well. This year, just when we thought we’d got away with it, we started finding it in kittiwakes in late June. It was right towards the end of June when it started hitting mainly kittiwakes and some guillemots as well – and the last couple of weeks have been pretty shocking, to be honest.
[JB]
Firstly, how did it differ from last year? Give us a quick recap of the species affected, and the extent of the devastation.
[CH]
Last year … here at St Abb’s Head we’ve got over 30,000 guillemots and they’re our most numerous seabird. A guillemot colony – if any of you have been to a guillemot colony, you’ll know – it’s a mosh pit; it’s an absolute mosh pit. The spread of a virus within the guillemots is always going to happen; the conditions are absolutely perfect for diseases to spread. Guillemots were the species affected most last year. What we saw were a lot of the chicks that we were losing. The chicks seemed to have low immunity to it. Around the colonies here, we were seeing piles of dead chicks in the water. As we spoke about before, you get hardened to this. Death is part of life on a seabird colony or a seal colony; wherever you work with wildlife, death is a part of that. But to see it on that scale and to see it affecting chicks that are completely helpless was pretty horrendous to be honest. We lost hundreds of guillemots here, thousands of birds in total. Across the coast here, just up the road from here, is Bass Rock, the world’s biggest gannetry, and they lost thousands and thousands of adult breeding gannets.
The seabirds that it’s affecting this year – it seems slightly different in the way it’s hit – is mainly affecting adult kittiwakes.
[JB]
When did you get an inkling that something was afoot?
[CH]
We had very small numbers throughout the start of June – really small numbers, nothing out of the norm, and so we’re were very hopeful that, like I said, we’d got away with it. We thought the chicks were getting big and the seabirds were really cracking on with the season. We thought they were relatively avian flu-free. But towards the end of June and then the first couple of weeks of July, the numbers really ramped up and we started seeing patches of them. So, a common theme is – we’ve had a quick walk around this morning and there’s a patch under the lighthouse where the birds seem to be seeking out fresh water. I don’t know if that’s because they’re already affected and they’re ill, they’re already infected with the virus, but they’re seeking out fresh water. The birds are then going there to die and under the lighthouse is a pile of about 40 or 50 birds. We’ve got on-shore winds at the moment just after this weekend, and lots and lots of birds have started washing ashore on the beaches as well. We’re seeing – just before we had a juvenile kittiwake that had just fledged the nest.
[JB]
Oh, that’s … To explain to listeners, it’s bad enough seeing 50 dead birds washed up on the rocks, but what I’ve found even more harrowing was we went on a walk on a coastal path and there was a kittiwake that was just a few weeks old?
[CH
Yeah, a juvenile kittiwake just fledged the nest.
[JB]
A beautiful, beautiful creature wandering up the path. It didn’t have the strength hardly to make a few steps. We could have got within touching distance of it because it didn’t know what was happening. Of course, we didn’t because you have to give them a wide berth, but it was one of the saddest sights I think I’ve seen. Because bird flu – remind us – it’s a neurological disease?
[CH]
It is, yeah, it affects … When you see the birds dying, what you can see is they show cognitive confusion, they’ll throw their heads back, they’ll shake their heads and they’ll often walk in circles. They can’t take off. If they’re in the water, you’ll see one wing flapping and they’re swimming in circles. It’s a horrific way to die.
As I said, you get used to it. Predation is one of my favourite parts of nature actually, when you see a peregrine take a bird out the sky and smash it and eat it – I love that! [Oh, Ciaran.] It’s fantastic! Death is part of that – it’s great. When you see a bonxie taking food off a puffin, or taking a puffin out the sky – it’s phenomenal! One of the best things you can see.
[JB]
Red in tooth and claw!
[CH]
Exactly! That’s one of my favourite bits about nature. But when you see them helpless and dying …
We have patches of these birds that we monitor. We have productivity plots where we’ll have the same patch that’s been monitored for over 35 years. We get to know them really well. And it’s when you see the chicks, they’re big and they’re almost ready to go – and then the next day, they’re dead in the nest. It’s just horrendous. The scale of it is horrendous as well. What we’re seeing across Scotland and across the world, this virus is spreading and there’s nothing really that we can do about it. There’s nothing we can do to halt the spread.
[JB]
So, this year, is it the same strain? You were down with the full Hazmat gear on this morning. You are testing birds and you are sending it away. What are they saying?
[CH]
The two birds that we’ve tested – two kittiwakes – have tested positive for bird flu. It came back as highly pathogenic avian influenza, H5N1. That is the strain that is the most prevalent in the North Atlantic and in this region at the moment. That’s spreading through seabirds here. And seabirds don’t know boundaries. Unfortunately, the way it spread last year amongst the young gannets – they would go from colony to colony and spread it. But here it’s spreading in little tiny isolated patches, so yeah …
[JB]
It seems to be along the east coast of Britain – England’s very badly hit, the north of England, North East England.
[CH]
Yes, North East England and the east coast of Scotland seem to be the worst affected areas. There are thousands of birds that have died this year on this stretch of coast. It was actually quite uplifting. Unfortunately, as part of this pandemic, if you can call it that – a bird pandemic, avian pandemic. [It is] – it’s brought us all closer together, all the seabird sites in the NTS. We’re all getting together regularly and chatting about what we’re seeing at our sites, sharing knowledge, sharing information, and also just having a chat and lifting each other up a bit. It can get a bit depressing when day after day after day, you’re seeing death all the time. It’s actually quite good to get a sounding board. It was really great – the last meeting we had, most of our colonies (touch wood) were avian flu-free on the west coast. The islands on the west coast and Shetland this year seem to be pretty free of it. I’m kind of nervous saying that because I really don’t want it to spread now, but we’re coming to the end of the seabird season. There are signs of positivity; there is hope out there.
We were talking about gannets earlier on. Something that’s absolutely fascinating that we’ve seen in gannets is the eye colour change. On the Bass Rock, which is the world’s biggest gannetry, just up the road from here, in studies done by the RSPB and the Seabird Centre, they’ve taken samples from birds that have dark eyes. Basically, the whole iris just goes jet black and it shows that these birds have had exposure to the virus and have recovered. Here at St Abb’s Head, we actually have several pairs of gannets that have affected eyes – some with both dark eyes, some with one eye dark and one eye pale. They have chicks and they are breeding successfully. This was discovered early this year and it really gave us the first sign of hope in the colony; it was really uplifting. The only real way out of this is they develop immunity. When we’ve seen that in the gannets, the hope is that it spreads to other species and that they develop immunity.
[JB]
That’s incredible. Nature has given you a visual clue almost?
[CH]
It is phenomenal. It’s really interesting. With binoculars and telescopes out here on the cliffs, you can see them really close up. To see a species that you’re really familiar with – they have really pale irises, a really pale colour – to go from that to jet black! Can you imagine if that was in COVID, and people were walking round with jet black eyes, and you’d be like ‘oh, they’ve had the virus’. It’s so interesting.
[JB]
Yes. It’s something out of scientific fiction.
[CH]
It really is. It gives us the ability to study it as well. We’re monitoring birds that have affected eyes and those that don’t, to see if there is any difference in the breeding success between the birds that have immunity. I know on the Bass Rock, the research never stops, and it’s the same at the NTS sites. We want to learn as much as we can about this virus, because it will help us understand it and then potentially help us look at ways to mitigate against it in the future.
[JB]
There was a taskforce set up last year. What’s it doing?
[CH]
The avian flu taskforce has been set up by NatureScot and various other organisations. One thing I will say is I think we have got a hell of a lot better at monitoring it, tracking it and understanding it. Last year, I think everyone was slightly chasing their tails because we didn’t have a proper set-up for monitoring it and reporting it. What we do here are very regular – daily, if we can – patrols of the reserve, all parts of the reserve – every nook and cranny is covered. What we’ll do is we’ll record every dead bird on an app called EpiCollect and then we’ll also put our records into DEFRA. Once they’re submitted to DEFRA, those are national records that get shared. That’s an international database as well, that can then be used to look at the wider scale of avian flu and the virus spread.
I think we’ve got much better at understanding it. I think the staff on the ground have got much better advice and understanding. We’re fully prepared with all our PPE when we do need to go and remove birds or when we do need to sample birds as well. I think we’re just better set up for it really. I think we’re more on top of it, as you would expect and hope with the second big wave of it hitting this year. I mean, nothing prepares you for it. It’s still a shock to see birds that you’re passionate about, that you love and you see every day – it’s still really hard-hitting when you see them dying on a big scale, but I think we’re definitely set up better to deal with it.
[JB]
We know about the problems whenever it spreads to poultry and the fears for the food chain, etc. As a matter of interest, why doesn’t it, as yet, why hasn’t it spread to other wild birds, inland birds?
[CH]
I think it has. We know that geese were affected a few years ago; barnacle geese were affected on a massive scale. So, the wildfowl, again the most gregarious and social birds …
[JB]
But I’m talking about crows, I’m talking about the scavengers. Why …
[CH]
It has been found in crows but not in massive numbers. They must just have battery acid in their stomachs, because they are eating the dead birds here and they seem completely unaffected. The gannets developed immunity to it and are able to deal with the virus load. It’s possibly to do with their diets. If you think about them eating carrion, they’re exposed to some hellish things really in a normal environment. I was reading recently that it’s actually been discovered in species like reed warbler. I find this really interesting because I think about the mechanism for it spreading and how it spreads. A reed warbler is a relatively solitary bird that spends its life in a reed bed. It’ll have its chicks in a tiny nest, isolated from everything. It’s not a gregarious seabird – like the guillemots – that’s in a big mosh pit of disease.
The one thing that connects a lot of these cases is fresh water. Studies last year showed that the virus can survive in fresh water for over 200 days. One thing we’re trying to do here on the scale is collect the birds from fresh water and very public areas. This is two-fold: to stop it spreading, basically to reduce the risk of it spreading to people and to animals – to dogs, to foxes and to other mammals; but also to reduce it spreading within other species as well if it’s in fresh water. We’ve got a freshwater loch here on the reserve, and lots of species use that – it’s a bit of a highway; it’s a stop-off; it’s a place to go and have a drink and have a wash and socialise. Birds come from all over the planet to come and breed in this tiny little loch.
The reed warblers migrate to Africa in the winter. They come up here and spend a couple of months here – they’ll breed, and they’ll go back to sub-Saharan Africa. This bird that’s tested positive – this reed warbler – presumably (although I can’t confirm this) it’s had exposure to the virus load via fresh water. Obviously, it needs to drink fresh water and it spends its time breeding around fresh water. I suppose it’s not one of the best things, but one of the most interesting things about this is that we’re always learning. Like with the gannets with the eyes and the immunity, there’s so many new things that are going to be thrown up by this and we need to keep studying it; we need to keep learning more.
[JB]
There’s an evolution taking place.
[CH]
Absolutely. We’ve seen it in our lifetimes. We’ve seen this huge event. This is a point in time that we’ll always remember. I think it’s really vital that we try and capture as much information about it as we can.
[JB]
And something to stress again: if you should stumble upon a bird like the one we saw half an hour ago, disorientated – it is such a pathetic sight – you want to help. You think ‘oh, that’s an ill bird. What can I do? Can I take it somewhere to help it?’ The advice is …
[CH]
The advice is not to. Give it space, back off, put your dogs on a lead and give it as much space as you can. You can report it. You can report dead and injured/sick birds to DEFRA via the website – it’s really easy to find. If you’re looking for a location, then a What3Words on your phone or just a map grid reference is handy. It can help narrow it down. But just leave them alone; give them space.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately actually, it is a quick death. It usually doesn’t take very long for them to die at all. It’s not a nice death. As I said, they throw their heads back and they show confusion, and they do struggle, but they don’t last very long. And so, if you give it space and let it back off, it just wants somewhere quiet to die unfortunately. That’s what it’s looking for.
[JB]
And the great big global picture? This is an unfair question for you, Ciaran, but I’m going to ask it anyway because you feel so passionately about this and about what you’re seeing. What can be done? What can we do? I think it’s a settled science now that this originated from intensive poultry farming, didn’t it?
[CH]
It did, yeah. This is one of the most frustrating things about this strain of the virus – it’s come from an anthropogenic cause. It was something humans have caused through our desire for the need to produce cheap food. I think we need a change in attitude. I think we need a change in attitude to our diet, we need a change in attitude to our needs – we need to try and live more closely with nature, and try and work with it.
[JB]
And respect.
[CH]
Respect, yes. Absolutely, Jackie. We need to find a way to live alongside it and let it thrive. Something else that we can do, I suppose, is try and reduce other stresses on wild birds as well. Although at the moment there’s not a huge amount we can do about this strain of avian flu that’s sweeping the planet, something we want to try and do on a local and on a wider scale as well is reduce stresses. Offshore here is an amazing marine environment – it’s an absolutely stunning location and what we want to see really is the birds foraging really close inshore, finding food and provisioning for their chicks regularly.
Now, we need to protect our oceans. We need to protect them in every way. There’s obviously the industrialisation of the ocean that’s ongoing around the country. Over-fishing is a massive problem. Kittiwakes, which is the species that it’s hitting here at St Abb’s at the moment: if you go back to 1991 we had nearly 20,000 kittiwakes here. And now we have under 5,000. That’s in a 30-year period, we’ve lost 70+% of them. And that’s without this virus. This virus is like another nail in the coffin for the kittiwake. They have declined so massively. The reason for that is kittiwakes are surface feeders. They’re quite restricted in their foraging strategy. If you think about a guillemot, guillemots are diving machines. They can dive for over 200m and they can exploit a really wide range of food in the water table, whereas kittiwakes will pick food off the surface. They mainly eat sandeels – that’s the best and most nutritious food for their chicks. Those sandeels are being hoovered up off our coast, and those sandeels are being used for fertiliser and for animal feed. We need to help them out; we need to give them a helping hand because with everything else they’re facing, this is the last thing that they needed. Unfortunately, kittiwakes are being hit harder than ever.
[JB]
Well, the image of that poor, pathetic kittiwake in its final hours will stay with me for a very long time. Thank you very much, Ciaran, for your time; I’m sorry it’s such a sad story again. We are coming back later in the year; we’re coming to see the seals and the seal pups. So that’s life and birth – and that’s a far better story.
[CH]
Hopefully, yeah! I mean, the seals had a tough time of it a couple of years ago in Storm Arwen.
[JB]
Oh, fingers crossed!
[CH]
We lost a lot of pups, but we’ve got everything crossed. They really do live life on the edge. Seals pup in the middle of winter; they take that risk with their breeding strategy but it’s a phenomenal sight – the seal colonies are brilliant. One of the best things about this place is it changes so intensely seasonally. You can come here, and it can feel like a completely different place. I can’t promise you we can sit in the sunshine on the clifftop looking out over the sea next time! But what we should get is a lot of atmosphere, probably a bit more wind … and lots of seals.
[JB]
It's a beautiful place to come. There’s been quite a few walkers wandering past wondering what we’re doing huddled against a wall with a couple of microphones. There are plenty of people enjoying what is a glorious day here.
[CH]
They certainly are, and that’s something to remember. Coming to St Abb’s is not just dead birds. The positive thing is we’ve had a lot of chicks fledge; kittiwakes and lots of birds have fledged from the nests. There’s still plenty to see. There’s lots of gannet chicks which are doing fantastically well on the stacks; they’re doing absolutely brilliantly. Outwith all the wildlife, even if you just came for a stunning walk, honestly it’s one of the best places in Scotland you can come. I’m a bit biased but it’s a beautiful part of the world. Please don’t be put off visiting. Please come and see us and support our work, because we’re doing our best to both understand the virus but also to welcome everyone with open arms as well.
[JB]
What we’ll do – we’ll tweet a picture of exactly where we’re sitting and the glorious view that’s in front of us. Ciaran, a joy to talk to you – thank you very much.
[CH]
You too, Jackie – thank you.
[JB]
So, a Scotland without kittiwakes or great skuas? It seems unthinkable, doesn’t it? But it’s not impossible. The National Trust for Scotland cares for our heritage, and that heritage includes seabirds and other wildlife that shelter, breed and feed at our places. Year in, year out, dedicated rangers like Ciaran (he’s blushing now!) and their other experts are caring for our wild birds. And we couldn’t do it without you. If you’re interested in learning more, you could join our Save our Seabirds campaign. Details are on the website nts.org.uk and search for save our seabirds.
I’m sure we will be back at St Abb’s in the not-too-distant future, when Ciaran has promised to bring me here for the seal pup season. A much happier story when we’ll be enjoying new life.
Until next time, goodbye.
[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland. Presented by Jackie Bird.
For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.
Following the above episode, which investigated the 2022 outbreak of avian flu at Scottish seabird colonies, Jackie returns to St Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve in the wake of new cases being reported. Joined by ranger Ciaran Hatsell, Jackie learns how this year’s cases have been identified and exactly how the disease is impacting kittiwakes at St Abb’s Head and beyond.
Listen in to find out how Ciaran and other National Trust for Scotland staff are helping in the fight against avian influenza, and discover more about what you can do to report dead seabirds.
If you would like to help further, please support our Save our Seabirds campaign.
This podcast was released in July 2023.
Seals and other winter wildlife at St Abb’s Head
Transcript
Seven voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Ciaran Hatsell [CH]; Alex Deakin [AD] courtesy of the Met Office; second male voiceover [MV2]; female visitor [V1]; male visitor [V2]
[MV]
Love Scotland – brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.
[JB]
If you’re a fan of wildlife documentaries, then I suggest you switch off your TV and make your way immediately to St Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve, where you can experience the real thing. St Abbs on the Berwickshire coast is nature’s Netflix, offering a rolling array of wildlife dramas amid this stunning landscape.
Earlier this year, you might remember we visited during the frenzied seabird nesting season, and now we’re back to enjoy another burst of new life. For a few weeks during November and December, thousands of grey seals take over the beaches here to give birth to their pups. The steep cliffs at St Abb’s Head means that the seals can give birth safely away from human interference, while at the same time allowing us to get amazing views.
As ever at St Abb’s, I’m in the capable hands of Head Ranger Ciaran Hatsell.
[CH]
Hi, Jackie. How are you getting on?
[JB]
Now I have to confess, Ciaran, we have moved away from the coast because it’s blowing a gale and the hailstones were horizontal.
[CH]
Yeah, I think it was a good choice. It’s great to have you back, Jackie. Welcome back to St Abb’s Head … and I love ‘nature’s Netflix’. I’m definitely going to steal that!
[JB]
You can have it with my blessing! We were down at the coast a few minutes ago and we had a bird’s eye view of the seals. I suppose I meant what I said in the introduction: it is like watching a nature programme, but they’re right in front of you.
[CH]
It’s absolutely incredible. What we see here is everything. We see life, we see death, we see drama, and it unfolds right in front of you. The longer you watch a grey seal colony, the more it’s like EastEnders. At this time of year, we’ve got lovely tiny white pups that have just been born and they’re suckling from their mothers.
[JB]
They look all furry. Is it fur? What have they got on their skin?
[CH]
The white fur is called lanugo – that’s the technical name for it – and it’s extremely good at insulating. It’s like having 10 woolly jumpers on. They’re really, really amazing fibres. When a seal pup’s born, it weighs about 14 or 15kg. So, it’s already pretty big, already pretty chunky. In just three weeks that pup will treble in weight, so it’ll go from about 14/15 to 45kg. They are experts at piling on the pounds. They make me quite jealous actually, this time of year, because you feel a bit like that in the winter, don’t you?! Eat more biscuits and cake and stuff because it’s just colder. That’s just survival! And that’s exactly what the grey seals are doing. Being as fat as you can for a grey seal pup is the most important order of the day.
[JB]
The small beach that I can see, because we’re actually nestled in a car just now, but the windows are open. We can see the beach that we’ve just visited, a small bay. We’re getting about 25 feet I suppose from the nearest. So, we’re not disturbing them, but we’re getting that great view. How many mums and pups were there? Paint that picture for me.
[CH]
On the beach in front of us, we’ve got around 20 females that have pups with them. In amongst that, we have a few bulls as well. The bulls are bigger, darker; they’ve got bigger, much lazier. If you visit a seal colony, you’ll see a lot of sleeping. That sleeping is actually really vital – the energy conservation can save their life. So, an extra nap can really have a big impact.
Like you said before, you know you can get really amazing views. Just here at the Head we have the coastal footpath that runs right alongside these rookeries. That’s what we call a pupping area – it’s a rookery. Now, it’s our role as rangers here – I’ve got a small team of rangers – and it’s our job to do what we can to protect nature and provide a safe space for it, but also to share that with people as well. And that can be a really difficult balance to get right.
A really key message when you come at this time of year is just give them space. When you look at a colony, you want to see them behaving naturally. You want to see pups feeding, you want to see them relaxing, you want to see everything that a grey seal colony brings, that’s all you want to see. You don’t want to see them raising their heads. If you see them raising their heads and looking at you, it means they’ve noticed you and it’s time to take a step back. That’s really, really important. You can get incredible views if you bring binoculars, but at some of these beaches, you don’t even need them.
A really key part of our role is daily patrols. Just this morning we had a seal that had flopped up onto the path, right into the middle of the footpath. And so we do these early morning daily patrols and just shimmy them back onto the beach. People see these fluffy white helpless things laid on the beach and think we need to help this. It’s human instinct to want to help and protect, especially when they cry. Because when they cry for milk, they sound oddly like a human baby. It’s quite eerie.
These are really fiercely independent animals. At 3 weeks old, they are left by the females. The females have lost half their body weight. They head out to sea and the pup moults that white coat, first waterproof coat, and it’s a baptism of fire. It’s straight into the North Sea. That’s why being as fat as you can for a seal is so important, because there’s a time lag between leaving the beach as a blimp, a big barrel of a seal, and learning to become an efficient predator.
[JB]
Tell me about the mothers. Let’s break it down. But before we do, can I get my producer who’s sitting in the back of the 4x4 – I think the machine’s getting wet, so let’s put the engine on. And what we’ll do is we’ll close the windows. I feel we’re cheating! We’re doing something about the great outdoors when we’re sitting in a car, but the back of my head is now wet!
[CH]
We’re getting a bad reputation!
[JB]
Yeah, it’s not exactly a great adventure! Tell me about the mothers then; tell me about the females.
[CH]
The female comes ashore. She can weigh up to 200kg, so she’ll come ashore just before she pups, and they nearly always give birth at night. I’ve worked with seals for about 12 years now, and I’ve only seen a handful of births, so it’s quite rare to actually see them being born; it nearly always happens at night and it happens incredibly quickly.
[JB]
That’s incredible, isn’t it.
[CH]
It’s pretty remarkable. I’ve been watching them and I’ve always … There’s a few times where I’ve picked out females that look uncomfortable and they’re shuffling around on the beach and you think this is definitely going to blow, this is going to pop. And I’ll watch it for hours and hours and hours and nothing. And then next morning there’s a brand new pup lying there. If you are lucky enough to see them being born, the process is incredible. I mean, it comes out really quickly. The pup will fight its way out the sack and straight away the female is nuzzling the pup, and the pup turns around and nuzzles the female. That scent bonding is really, really important. It’s a really vital part of the bonding process for mother and pup.
Generally, she’ll just have one. One is more than enough. The life will be sucked out of her – she can lose up to half her body weight. She starts at up to 200kg; she could be under 100 by the time that three weeks has ended.
[JB]
And how long is the gestation period? How long has it been?
[CH]
Well, this is a really cool thing about seals. Grey seals are able to do what very few animals on the planet are able to do; there are around 130 mammals in the world that do this – and it’s called delayed implantation. Basically, grey seals have got a nine-month gestation period but they fit it into a year’s gap. So, the egg’s fertilised, the females stop it developing – they keep it inside them but it does not implant. It’s the blastocyst stage, that’s what it’s called. They keep it inside them, and in the new year they’ll take cues from the water temperature, from the environment, from food source – things that are beyond our perception because they’re much more intelligent in the natural sense than us. And they’ll choose basically when to get pregnant.
Now, this sounds like a crazy tactic, but what that does in this colonial style of breeding, where the females want to mate with the biggest, baddest bulls that have the best genes, it enables them to do it all while they’re all in one place for a very short time.
So, the female’s got a hell of a few weeks. She’ll give birth to a pup, she’ll have the life sucked out of her, and then she’ll get basically accosted by a huge bull. Watching the mating process is really interesting. Sometimes it’s incredibly delicate – there are gentle nibbles, gentle scratches – and sometimes it’s really, really rough. The bull can look almost double her size. The bull seals can weigh up to 300kg; they’re absolutely monsters.
[JB]
And they’re already lying in wait, because another of the bays we stopped at, there were lots of females and lots of pups, and just a great big bull, as you said earlier, flopped down at the bar, biding his time for these poor, poor females. As soon as the pups have gone and they’re depleted, he will pounce.
They’re living cheek by jowl. We saw a couple of the females having a bit of a slap of each other. Is that fairly common?
[CH]
When the females are fighting, all they’re trying to do is defend that really small territory for the pups. Space is at a premium on the beaches. This really small beach is really at its capacity. Normally, we’d only have about a handful of pups on there – and there are 20 pups on there. So, space becomes really important. And the pups, to their own detriment, are often very curious. They’ll flop around, especially when they’re weaned, and explore and get into bother and try and suckle off other females and just cause absolute carnage.
But the females will often defend their pup with their life. Sometimes they’ll grab other pups that have strayed into their small territory. And that means that the females will sometimes have squabbles and fights. It’s posturing. They’ll open their mouths, they’ll snarl at each other, they’ll flap the flippers.
They’re incredibly agile and graceful creatures in the sea; that’s where they’re most at home. You’ll see people in some spots diving with them. They’re really curious, they feel at home. Whereas on land, same as penguins, they’re just so clumsy, they flop around – everything looks like an effort. When they move up the beaches, it’s just ridiculous. They’ll use their flippers and their mouths to gesture and posture at each other. And that’s how they communicate because they’re very limited in their arsenal; whereas in the water, they’re just like ballerinas of the sea. They’re really, really graceful.
[JB]
They’re certainly ungainly on land. I wish people could see the joy in your eyes when you talk about the seals, because it’s clearly a number of thriving colonies here. But we’re recording this late November 2023 and almost to the day, two years ago, at this very spot, it was all so very different.
[AD]
Storm Arwen is hitting the UK on Friday night and it’s prompted a rare Met Office Red warning for the strength of the winds across the coastal strip of eastern Scotland and northeast England. The storm is heading steadily … [fades out]
[CH]
So, Storm Arwen hit on 27 November 2021. I remember it very well. We were able to be in a unique position here to get a count in just before the storm hit.
[AD]
It’s an unusual wind direction as well, bringing in some very large and dangerous waves, likely to be some coastal damage, along with structural damage from these kind of winds and the likelihood of power issues … [fades out]
[CH]
We had a Red weather warning that was forecast just into the afternoon. We were just returning from doing a count. We woke up in the morning and saw carnage like I’ve never seen before. When you work in conservation, you get completely hardened to death. It’s part of life; on a seabird or a seal colony, it’s completely normal, but seeing it on that scale was massively hard hitting.
We lost in that one storm – we did a count before and after – we lost 42% of all the pups, so it was 849 pups in that one storm. There were piles of bodies in the water all the way up the jetty on the beaches. There were strand lines of dead seal pups. Seal pups that had weaned, 3–4 weeks old and they were ready to go into the sea, and the turbulence and the strength of the storm just unfortunately saw them drowned and bashed against the rocks and perished.
It was really hard to see and to witness. But actually it was a really important point in time. These turbulent winter storms are going to become more common. It’s going to affect seals. It’s going to affect seabirds. Some of the seabirds are displaced by turbulent winter storms and they are becoming more regular. So, it’s going to have an impact and it’s something that we have to become resilient to and the animals are going to have to get used to.
However, on the flip side of that, it’s really nice to have a success story in conservation. We’re often scrabbling around for something positive. We do end up talking about death, whether it’s bird flu or massive storms and losing all these seals, and what we saw the year after …
[JB]
Because let’s remember that the females have one pup, so you didn’t know what was going to happen in subsequent years.
[CH]
No. We talked about the breeding process. As soon as the females have weaned the pup, they’re ready to mate, they’re ready to go. We had lots of questions about whether there would be a reduction in the pupping rate because we didn’t know whether they’d had that chance to meet up with the bulls and actually carry out the mating process.
The next year, 2022, fast forward another year. We did another count and we had, I think, it was 15 more than the year before previously, so 15 more pups. And we were absolutely chuffed. There were so many questions around it and we just needed answers – and we did the count, and life found a way.
We’ve no idea what the process, what the mechanism was. They must have met up in the water. They must have found a way to meet up, maybe at the moulting sites. And yes, we had more pups. Certainly, this year we’ve just carried out our very first count. We’re in the middle of the count process at the moment, but the numbers look promising. We’ve had over 1,700 pups in our first count which is really, really close to what we had two years ago, pre-storm. So, it looks really good.
As I said, these positive conservation stories are so hard to find, and we’ve got to really grasp to them. Going back to 2007, there was no seal colony here. It’s a basically a pop-up seal colony in the space of around 15 years.
[JB]
I like that! I’m going to nick that – a pop-up seal colony. And what does the health of the seal colony here tell us about the bigger picture of marine life?
[CH]
Grey seals, and seabirds to an extent as well, are what we would call biological indicators. They’re relatively easy to study because they come ashore and pup. So, we’re able to count them and they are indicators of the wider health of the habitat in the wider ecosystem. Grey seals are the apex predator: they are #1, they are top of the food chain here. The fact there are so many is a really positive sign for the wider ecosystem because there is enough food to sustain them.
Not everyone likes seals. Historically, there have been culls in the past, going back to the 1960s and 70s.
[JB]
They’re protected now, aren’t they?
[CH]
They are protected. Seals are protected under the Marine Scotland Act; they’re afforded legal protection. But it’s just in the 60s and 70s, it’s not that long ago this is happening. Those culls were sanctioned on this stretch of coast, and there were thousands and thousands taken. What we’re likely seeing here is a bit of resurgence from the historical dip that the cull brought around.
A good way to explain it is that because a lot of the locals, the fishermen, a lot of people generally, a lot of fishing community around the UK and beyond, they really don’t like seals because they see them as an extremely voracious predator. And they are! They are that. I think an analogy that I sometimes use is that if you were stuck on a hill and snowed in for two weeks, and you knew that you were going to get out after two weeks and you had a finite supply of food, you wouldn’t go in the fridge on the first day and eat the entire contents because you’d have nothing left. That’s not how ecosystems work. Grey seals will take what they need to survive.
[JB]
What do they eat mainly?
[CH]
It’s a really varied diet. They do eat a lot of fish, but it will be whatever is most seasonally abundant. So, when the mackerel are running, they’ll eat a lot of mackerel. When there’s herring around, they’ll eat a lot of herring. Sand eels are the best source of food for seabirds and seals, so sand eels are the number one. That’s what we want to see them eating. Protecting our oceans is something that we can try and do to have a very positive impact for seals and seabirds going forward.
[JB]
That’s a lovely, optimistic note on which to take a quick break. And when we get back, we’ll check up on some of the other winter inhabitants enjoying the glory of St Abbs.
[MV2]
You need to smell the flowers, said my bro. Turns out wild heather works just as well. We were up Ben Lomond like mountain goats. Couldn’t believe it was so close to home. At the top though, life was a million miles away, so we signed up to help look after it. We all need looking after.
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk
[JB]
Welcome back to Love Scotland. Now, last time we spoke in the summer, Ciaran, you were experiencing the early stages of a late bird flu outbreak. Tell us what happened.
[CH]
We were thinking we got away with it. Bird flu hit St Abb’s Head and some of our other colonies a lot later than it did the previous year. It was a new strain and they were calling it the herring gull strain. Here at St Abbs, it affected mainly our kittiwakes. Kittiwakes are a species that … I mean, they are the colony – they are the noise, they’re gregarious, they’re lively, they’re the sound, the real soundscape of the seabird colony.
There are species that have already undergone massive declines for so many reasons, and to see them hit by bird flu, which is another nail in the coffin for the kittiwake, was really tough. We lost hundreds of adults, mainly adults. The productivity – that’s how many chicks fledged per nest – looked ok. There was a bit of a silver lining, but yeah, it was back to square one really. Back to a couple of years ago when we were donning PPE, picking up dead birds from the beaches and removing them again.
Me and my ranger Rachel dubbed ourselves the Flus Brothers because I think you’ve got to have a bit of black humour; a little bit of humour amongst all the darkness. Again, it was a tough time for everyone around seabird colonies around the UK, and it did seem that kittiwakes and gulls were hit the hardest and quite a few auks as well, so a lot of the guillemots later in the season were affected.
[JB]
Fairly recently, a lot of the rangers from right around Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland rangers, you got together and you had a seabird conference. a) Why wasn’t I invited? And b) What did you talk about? What did you come up with?
[CH]
This is the very first seabird conference the NTS has ever had. Last year, we employed a senior seabird officer – that’s Ellie Owen, who is spearheading all the seabird work for the NTS. For someone who’s worked with seabirds for 10 or 12+ years, this is really exciting. We got together from all our sites – from the far reaches of St Kilda out to Staffa, rangers from the Treshnish Isles that are going to be there the next year. And we got together and we chatted all things seabird.
That was a massive range of things – from how we use our data, how we monitor our seabirds, trying to get it all standardised, making sure that our data is as robust as it can be. We can then feed this into working really closely with our policy team, and we can actually use our voices as seabird advocates to exact change, to really make change.
[JB]
But what changes can you make and what are the dangers? What are you wary of?
[CH]
In a rapidly changing world, seabirds face so many different risks. We’re looking at massive issues from overfishing in the seas, so losing sandeels, taking the food out of their mouths. We want to campaign to shut sand eel fisheries in Scotland and around the UK.
Offshore wind developments is a massive thing. That’s something that we’ve been really, really great at talking about amongst ourselves, but actually, it’s a huge issue of our time now. The National Trust for Scotland, as an employer and someone who’s passionate about green energy actually, we don’t want to come across as anti-renewables and we’re absolutely not. It’s really quite simple. Our message is that we need the right things in the right places. There’s been a massive windfarm proposed off St Abb’s Head – Berwick Bank windfarm. It’s one of the biggest in Europe and it’s going to be huge. The projected impacts on our seabirds here at the headland – we’ve talked about some of the other issues they’ve already faced and they’re already up against it – the projected impacts are huge. So, we just want the right things in the right places and for the impact to be as low as it can be.
At the seabird conference, we had people from the communications team in the NTS, we had people from the policy team. And we’re basically just trying to work together to make sure that essentially we are the voice for our seabirds; we are the voice for our seals; we are the voice for all the nature that we are guardian of.
And this is a massive point in time to really feel that upwelling of excitement and passion, because there are so many great people that work for the NTS. We need to make sure that we get our voices in the big conversations. And we’re not scared to have those conversations and be really passionate advocates for nature, because they can’t speak up for themselves.
Often with all these issues, they snowball and pile up on top of each other, and it’s really easy to feel helpless. Something that people can do is support Our Seas campaign. We’re looking to fight the battle on all fronts. There are various things that people can do. They can add their name to petitions. They can go on our website and look at all the information that’s available to them. They can look at Citizen Science projects, getting involved in seabirds, getting engaged with them, because I think the more that we shout about them, the more that we get their stories out there, the more people come to love them. And if you love something, then you want to protect it. And that’s what we’re all about.
[JB]
Well, you’re certainly putting the message out there for people listening to this, not just people who are members of the National Trust for Scotland, but just people listening to the podcast generally. If you want to do something, if you love your wildlife, if you love your seabirds, you know what to do.
We met some people just as we were parking up here, visitors from Spain who are coming to see the seals.
[CH]
Hi guys. Welcome to St Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve. It’s very good to see you.
[V1]
Good to see you.
[V2]
Nice to meet you.
[CH]
Are you off to see anything particular today?
[V1]
Yeah, we came to see seals.
[CH]
Superb. Well, it’s a brilliant time of year you’ve come. We’re right at the peak of the pupping season now, so there’s lots and lots to see. There’s lots of pups on the beaches. The trails are really easy to find and they’re all marked out with fences and signs. As long as you stay the right side of those and be respectful of the space, you should be absolutely fine.
[V1]
Absolutely. We’ve seen that this is one of the best places in Scotland to see seals.
[CH]
It is! I mean, we’re just an hour from Edinburgh, just down the road, so it’s a really nice place to come and connect with nature. The seal colony is only here for a really short time, so they’ll be gone by about Christmas time. It’s really great that you’ve come at this time of year; it’s the perfect time of year.
[V1]
Where are they going after?
[CH]
A lot of them will just leave out to sea. The adults will undergo a complete moult of the fur, but they don’t do that here. They’re here for the pupping season, which for each pup is about 3 weeks. After the females have fed that pup for 3 weeks, it’ll go, but we get early and late pups because it’s quite a big colony. We’ll have sometimes over 2,000 pups that are born on this stretch of coast.
[V1]
OK, is there something that we need to keep in mind when we see the colony of seals?
[CH]
The most important thing is to give them space. We’ve got all the beaches fenced off and there should be enough space there, but just to be quiet, to be respectful and if you have a dog, keep it on a lead. It doesn’t look like you have one, but it’s a really important message because seals and dogs don’t really get on very well, as you can imagine!
We have had some horror stories of people trying to get too close to seals taking selfies.
[V2]
For example, if you see a seal injured, you have any phone number you can call, to report them, maybe to the vet or to some organisation to call?
[CH]
There are, yes, there are a couple of organisations. There’s British Divers Marine Life Rescue and the SSPCA.
[V1]
Because sometimes you see a seal with a net or something …
[CH]
That’s right. A really key message at this time of year if there was an injured or abandoned pup on a colony is to leave it, because if you go into that colony, you could risk disturbing the rest of the colony and actually doing more damage. If it’s on the beach in the colony, we let nature take its course. It sounds harsh, but it’s the best thing for the seal colonies. Now, if it was a seal on an isolated beach, it was on its own and it was washed ashore, there’s sometimes things you can do to help – and those organisations, the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, which is a bit of a mouthful, they do some brilliant work in rehabilitating injured or abandoned seals. But like I said, on the colony, a really important message is give them space, just be respectful and let nature take its course because that’s what we want to do.
[V1]
Amazing. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for everything.
[CH]
Hope you have a nice day.
[JB]
Is that representative of the people you get here in these months?
[CH]
Honestly, people come from everywhere. We’ve had messages saying I’ve got friends coming up from New York and people coming up from London. I think it’s such an incredible thing to see a seal colony. And one of the most exciting things is sharing it with people, seeing the looks on people’s faces when they see the seal pups, when they see them feeding, when they see them interacting, when they see them scratching, when they see them sleeping. It’s absolutely amazing.
We’ve had a few chats over the years. I’m lucky enough now to have a small team here. There’s a team of four of us now, a group of really, really passionate and enthusiastic rangers. Just last Saturday I had some family visiting and I brought them to see the seals as a civilian. I was walking around incognito. I had a big moustache on and bowler hat … And actually walking around and seeing them interacting with the public and showing people through telescopes, seeing the looks on kids’ faces and seeing the knowledge that they’re sharing with people. Honestly, for me, I just thought I was so proud. We’ve got an Engagement Ranger, we’ve got a Ranger, we’ve got a Visitor Services Assistant and we can do so much more and achieve so much more here at the headland.
Something that’s key here is going back a couple of years, it was just me on site. People could come here and not meet a member of staff. We need people to know that we’re looking after the wildlife here. We need people to know that we care about it.
[JB]
At this time of year, a lot of people batten down the hatches. A lot of Trust properties are closed because this is the time of year to restore and regroup. But the natural world is always open. What would you advise people with all of your experience to do?
[CH]
One thing I will say is that nature never closes its doors. No matter what it is, whether it’s small, as small as a tiny little mushroom that’s sprouting from the ground up to a grey seal that’s 300kg, engaging with nature is so good for your physical and mental health. It gets you outside, it gets the wind in your hair. I know we’ve had a bit too much of it today maybe!
[JB]
Says the couple sitting in a car! It’s the thought that counts!
[CH]
There are grey seal colonies all around the UK and we’re in quite a unique position to be an hour from Edinburgh. We’re very accessible and we do want people to come here and enjoy it. We do need people to enjoy it in a responsible way. But honestly, when I walk out there and I spend time with the seals, which I get less and less time to do, but I do try as much as I can to sit with the seals and just enjoy the season because it’s so short and so finite. We have to take advantage of these intense seasonal changes.
And that’s something that makes this place in particular so special. You go from a crazy seabird city to the noise and the jibber jabbering of the cliffs, and you get to this time of year and the beaches come alive with seals. Come and see it before Christmas time because they’re not here for long and just simple interactions.
Every weekend on Saturdays and Sundays, myself or one of the ranger team will be out there. We’ll be showing people the seals through binoculars and telescopes, sharing the life stories, answer any random questions that you may have, whether they’re about seals or not!
So come and see us. Come and ask us as many questions as you want and, like I said before, just get to love it, get to know it because once you know it, you love it. And when you love it, you want to protect it, and that’s what we want to do.
[JB]
You mentioned something really interesting there, because at this time of year, when we have only a few hours of light, you mentioned mental health. Now we’ve managed to travel down to St Abbs. I live in a city, for example, but within half a mile of me there’s a nice hill and I think that’s important, isn’t it? Because nature is everywhere, and the benefits of nature are everywhere.
[CH]
You’ve put it so lovely, Jackie. One of the best things about nature is you can find it in any nook and cranny. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of the busiest city; a little park, even one tree, if you focus on that, it’s really, really good for you. We appreciate that not everyone can make it out here and it’s not the easiest place to get around. You have to be at a level of physical fitness.
I think wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, just take time to notice nature. There’s something really beneficial for your mental health on focusing on the little things, whether it’s learning the bit of birdsong, whether it’s starting your journey along learning about mushrooms, because this time of year there’s lots of different things around.
It’s just really important that people engage with nature in a society that’s often disconnected with nature. And we find it through actual Netflix rather than nature Netflix. I think it’s really important to put that screen down and get yourself out as much as you can, even if you open a window and just enjoy the sound of the wind and the waves, maybe like we’re doing today in the car.
[JB]
Oh, stop telling people what wusses we are! Brilliant. Ciaran, as ever, thank you very much. That’s all from this chilly but uplifting episode of Love Scotland. I hope you’ll agree St Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve and its many inhabitants are cared for by the National Trust for Scotland and we would welcome a visit anytime.
For more information on the changing seasons here and what you can expect to see, head to the website at nts.org.uk
That’s also where you’ll find plenty of information about other Trust properties across Scotland and their opening times over the winter season.
But from me, for now, bye bye.
[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.
For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.
Jackie returns to St Abb’s Head NNR in the Scottish Borders, just months after she visited to investigate the summer’s avian flu outbreak. In the winter, many of the seabirds head out to sea – but there’s still a lot of wildlife to be found.
Joined once again by Head Ranger Ciaran Hatsell, Jackie spends some time getting to know the seal pups on the beach, two years after the population was devastated by Storm Arwen. She also finds out what has happened at St Abb’s Head since the avian flu outbreak, and how the seals signal the wider health of the local ecosystem.
Weather warning report by Alex Deakin, courtesy of the Met Office.
This podcast was released in December 2023.