The workshop was run by Dr. Julian Greenwood and gave us all an interesting insight into the lives of Black Guillemots and how we can help survey and monitor their activities.

These small black and white Auks, have bright red feet and tend to nest in harbour walls or manmade holes such as the insides of old cannons! During the workshop we talked about various sites with large numbers of nesting birds and discussed factors which may affect their success rates.

We also discussed survey techniques which, as is so often the case with wildlife, involves a pre-dawn wake up call to get out and survey them in the couple of hours after dawn in which they come inshore to the nest sites in April. We also learned about artificial nest boxes and their sucess at many sites around the coast and how to monitor productivity at nest sites.

Then we all walked down along Bangor marina to watch some of the resident Black Guillemots and observe the manmade nest boxes that have been installed along the harbour walls.

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