Ringing terns - Al Jarrim Island south (Bahrain)

On Friday 20 June I set off at 02:30 hrs to go to Bahrain to ring terns. I met up with Jason, Nicole, Ali, Mahmood, Ahmed and a couple of others to go out to the island at 04:00 to ring tern chicks. This is one of the best days ringing of the year for me and it is amazing to be on an island full of breeding terns. Ali has a new more powerful boat now that he also uses to take people diving in Bahrain and it has two 250 HP engines and a covered roof, so is very fast.  We arrived at the island at 06:00 hrs and set about first ringing Bridled Tern chicks. They nest under cover of the vegetation and are incredibly well camouflaged and sit tight so good eyesight and a lot of help are required. We do these first as it is extremely hard work and want to do it in the coolest part of the day before temperatures rise into the 40’s Celsius. There were three ringers and we ringed a total of 143 Bridled Tern chicks that is slightly less than normal.  After this we set up our corral to catch Lesser Crested Tern Chicks that are all gathered together in large crèches of baby terns with hundreds of adults looking after them. As they are all in large groups we walk the birds down into our corral and transfer them to large baskets for processing. Since this capture technique was devised we have become much more proficient and we catch lots of birds in a short time and process them as quickly as possible so they can return to their parents for shade. We keep the birds in covered baskets with a wet towel on top to keep them cool and we have not lost a single bird doing this. We ringed 997 Lesser Crested Tern chicks and ran out of rings, this being the biggest number of birds we have singed in a single day since we started going to the islands. We also ringed three White-cheeked Tern chicks a species that has not bred on this island in the previous three breeding seasons I have visited. They do breed on the middle island but we have only been here once and it was a nice surprise to see the adults feeding young on the south island. Another nice surprise was to see an adult Bridled Tern I photographed with a ring on, indicating it is one of our birds. We have ringed hundreds of young birds and a single adult that Nicole rescued from a fishing net so it is impossible to tell if this is a young bird returning to breed or not. We also found at least ten Indian Reef Heron nests with large young in them. Normally there are only one of two nests but this year the numbers are much higher so some reason. An interesting fact was that under every Indian Reef Heron nest a Bridled Tern chick was hiding. I would like to thank Ali and all the helpers for this excellent days ringing.

Al Jarrim Island South

Lesser Crested Terns

Ringing Corral

Bridled Tern egg

Bridled Tern chick

Ringed adult Bridled Tern

Indian Reef Heron

Ali's Diving boat

Ringing Team

Ringing Team

Bahrain – Ringing at Al Jarrim Island (Middle)

An extremely early trip to Bahrain, leaving Dhahran at 02:45 hrs, was required on Friday as we were going to try to ring Tern Chicks on the Al Jarrim Islands. These are three man made islands offshore Bahrain and have a southern, middle and northern island. We went first to the middle island to try to catch and ring White-cheeked Tern chicks. We went in Ali’s boat and had a team of seven including Brendan, Nicole, Ali, Jason, Ahmed, Hussain and myself. The tide was on the way in as we arrived and this mean we had to wade to shore from the boat. When we got to the middle island we split up with Brendan, Ahmed and Hussain going one way and Nicole, Jason, Ali and I the other. It was relative cool as it was only 06:00 hrs and we managed to find a few White-cheeked tern chicks and ringed 88 birds of which I ringed 19. Most birds were hiding under small bushed although a few were on the beach hiding under flotsam and jetsam. One the way around the island we found two colonies of Lesser Crested Terns with perhaps 200 breeding birds in each. They just lay their eggs on the ground in full view, and these birds had not been present last year. We also found a few Bridled Tern Chicks and I ringed seven of these birds. When we got back to where the boat was moored I saw two Indian Reef Heron Chicks which I cashed after and caught. We also caught a four more and I ringed three including a dark phase as well as two light phase birds. This was a new ringing species for me as well as Nicole and this combined with the fact I had not ringed White-cheeked Tern meant we had had a good trip to the middle island. 

Indian Reef Heron (dark phase juvenile)

Jason & Nicole with Indian Reef Herons (juveniles)

Indian Reef Heron nest

After catching the Indian Reef Herons I had to try and find Brendan as he had the larger rings and pliers, and this meant I had to walk all the way around the island again. I failed to find him on this walk as he had already returned the other way but it did allow me to photograph a few Bridled Terns in flight and on the ground. I also found two Indian Reef Heron nests with two eggs in each. These nests are just built low to the ground on top of the low lying vegetation. We will be coming back to this island on 6th July all going well to try to ring the Lesser Crested terns as well as any Bridled terns we may find. Brendan also found a tideline corpse of an adult Bridled Tern with a ring. The ring number was SR58087 and was ringed Brendan previously on the South Island in 2008 see here for details

Bridled Tern

Bridled Tern