When we left Baltray at 10:30 pm last night we had 33 active nests with 66 eggs and 4 chicks.  When wardening commenced this morning at 6 am, to our horror we found that a serious predation had occured.  Having done a complete check, we are now left with 11 nests with 20 eggs and 6 chicks (2 hatched since last night). 

We have the nesting enclosure divided into 6 zones and predation took place in all zones.  We are satisfied that this was an avian attack as there is no evidence of entry or footprints and the entire enclosure is protected by electric fencing with each zone having its own fencing.  There are marks at 1 zone as if something was at the fence but the marks are confined to the fence area of that 1 zone.

The question is what type of bird carried out the attack?  Crows have been quiet for the past couple of weeks but the gulls have looked quite threatening and the Little Terns have been chasing them away from the area.  A Grey Heron has been feeding out at the beach for the past couple of days. 

The lack of night-time wardening is a problem.  With wardening done entirely on a voluntary basis, we just cannot stretch to cover nights.  As it is, our volunteer wardens cover 16 to 17 hours per day.  They are a great group of people without whom we just could not run this project.

Our chicks all escaped predation, we were especially worried about nest 2 as the second chick only hatched last night.  There was no sign of them this morning and all other nests in that area bar 1 were predated.  We were so relieved to discover them later today looking in good shape.

Nest 3 today with 2 chicks.


Nest number 2 chicks which miraculously escaped predation last night. 
Only 1 other nest in this zone was not predated.