Bridled tern and Coquet Island

The arrival of a bridled tern on Coquet Island, Northumberland last weekend convinced me that it was time to pay a long overdue visit to one of my favourite counties. In truth the bridled tern was just an excuse, the real reason I wanted to go was to see the adult American black tern at nearby Long Nanny, a bird which I had long wanted to see but had never got round to. Add to that the opportunity to visit Coquet Island for the first time and it was what they call a no-brainer.

I booked onto a boat trip at 1pm from Amble with Puffin Cruises. They had a good record of seeing the bridled tern, yesterday for example they saw it on every trip, but I was aware that it was a scheduled tourist boat with less than 45 minutes spent around the island. Moreover seeing the bridled tern was probably not the priority of the skipper or most of the tourists on the boat, who not unreasonably were likely to be more interested in puffins and seals rather than a distant bird they'd never heard of, which without binoculars they'd struggle to even see.

So for insurance purposes I headed first to the top of a dune just south of Amble and viewed the island through the scope at a distance of about 1.5km. Fortunately there was another birder there and he had located the tern. It was sitting in its favourite spot on top of the island just right of the solar panels. There was a bit of heat haze, but when cloud came over the haze lifted slightly and I could just about make it out as a bridled tern. Finally it flew and it was a lot clearer view and easily identifiable.....and relax. Now I could go on the boat trip and enjoy the spectacle of the seabird colony, hoping for better views of the star attraction of course, but no pressure even if I didn't see it.

I'd say that the boat was about 50/50, birders/bemused tourists. We sailed straight to the area that the bridled tern usually frequented and fortunately somebody picked it out immediately, sitting in exactly the same spot where I had seen it from the top of my sand dune. By pure luck rather than design it was a very high tide today so the boat was able to get closer in to the island than normal and we were probably little more than 70m away from the bird. Of course I had no scope with me and the boat was bobbing up and down and there were people standing in front of me, but it was a decent enough view, certainly a lot better than from the mainland. After about 5 minutes we moved away and that was it so far as the bridled tern was concerned.

That was fine by me though, I was eager to see the rest of the island. It was just an awesome spectacle, with the air full of birds, mainly terns and puffins. 

It's a long time since I've seen so many puffins. I've seen them closer of course on Lunga in the Hebrides, Craigleith in the Firth of Forth, Inner Farne and elsewhere, places where they'll walk right up to you, but on Coquet Island the spectacle is just breathtaking. Thousands of birds, sometimes flying from the island in waves and the sea was full of them. To be honest I don't think I've seen such flypasts since I was last on St Kilda in 1987. I believe that there are in the region of 30,000 pairs of puffins on Coquet Island.

Coquet Island has most if not all of the UK population of breeding roseate terns. A few years ago there were around 180 pairs, but I know that bird flu has badly affected them in recent years so I'm sure that there must be less than that now.

Eiders breed on the island.

On days such as this it makes me wonder at why I don't come to this coast more often. It was just a fabulous day, well worth the effort.

In 2021, prior to bird flu, there were 1,919 pairs of Sandwich terns, 1,776 pairs of common terns and 1,369 pairs of arctic terns. I'm not sure how many there are now, I assume much reduced numbers.

There was masses of bloody cranesbill in the dunes on the mainland.