Fylde Bird Club works with Preston City Council to assist the Common Tern colony at Preston.
The Dock is owned and managed by Preston City Council and the terns nest on wave breakers that float in the dock. The Bird Club provides advice to the Council and provides nest trays and gravel for the terns to nest on. Each year the nest trays are set out by Council staff from Preston Dock assisted by Bird Club members, using the Council’s boat to gain access.
In recent years the productivity of the colony has been very poor, owing largely to egg predation by Coots and Moorhens. In the last two years, few chicks were hatched. Prior to that a Lesser Black-backed Gull had become very proficient at snatching tern chicks from the wave breakers. The Bird Club’s Committee have been trying to devise and implement measures to reduce predation.
The wave breakers have an important function, to protect moored boats by damping out waves on the dock. Therefore, we are limited in what we can install on them. We cannot fit anything that will significantly catch the wind and we cannot drill into the structure of the platforms.
The first measures saw the introduction of short covered sections to the nest trays, to provide shade and cover for the tern chicks. In addition, large slates were set on top of bricks, to provide air raid shelters for the chicks to hide under. Losses to the gull were still high so canes were introduced to provide an obstruction to the raiding gull, which typically snatched chicks during high speed passes, without landing. Observations showed that the terns accepted the canes and the gull was impeded. However, in the same season as the canes were introduced, a coot developed a taste for tern eggs and decimated the colony! The following year a moorhen did the same thing and was even more relentless.
Two trial anti-coot fences. Six foot by four foot fences were placed around two sets of nine tern nest trays. It was hoped that these fences would deter the coots and moorhens from accessing the nest trays inside. However the terns didn’t nest in them and moorhens had not trouble climbing in!
2023 Season
During June at least 33 adults were sitting on nests. Almost all were in nest trays with canes. All were on the two most southern wave breakers, in the western set. Some chick losses have been recorded owing to Lesser Black-backed Gull predation and some possibly owing to hot weather but chick survival appears quite good so far. No reports of egg predation by Moorhens or Coots have been noted, despite both species breeding in close proximity to the terns.
On 7th July 17 chicks were visible (but highly likely many more were invisible in nest trays) and another 17 adults were apparently on additional nests. Some chicks were on the point of flying and several may have already fledged and left.
It seems that so far the colony has escaped the effects of bird flu. One dead adult tern has been seen but the cause is unknown.
At the end of the season, a conservative estimate put the number of fledged young at 20