Hello all,
Its fledging time for around 300,000 Manx Shearwater chicks from Skomer, Skokholm and Ramsey, and this week, they are heading out into a gale. There’s a high chance of finding birds that have been forced ashore. They can turn up in large numbers on the coast, but also occasionally really quite a long way inland- gardens in Carmarthen, for example.
Here is the advice for anyone who finds a bird:
If you find one please just keep it in a box, with as little disturbance as possible. Handle with care, wear gloves and keep the bird away from your face. Please release it to sea, at dusk, on a sheltered bit of the coast. It’s not a problem for the birds to be kept for a couple of days as they will have a LOT of fat reserves, and when the wind drops off a bit they will find it easier to navigate out to sea. Don’t try and release them in the daytime or if it’s flat calm. It can be distressing to see so many birds blown ashore, but it’s only a tiny proportion of the hundreds of thousands still safely at sea.
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