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Living World: Guillemots of Skomer

Guillemots on the Welsh island of Skomer

17/08/2014

Guillemots of Skomer

BBC Radio 4 - Living World, Guillemots of Skomer

Tim Birkhead looks at the guillemots of Skomer Island that have been studied for 42 years.

Prof Tim Birkhead reveals some of the secrets of a 42-year study by the University of Sheffield on the guillemots of Skomer Island, one of Britain's longest bird surveys.

The Living World is a natural history strand that revels in rich encounter, immersion in the natural world and warm, enthusiastic story telling.

Skomer Island lies off the south east coast of Wales and is home to thousands of seabirds.

There are 25,000 guillemots packed together on the cliffs, no other bird breeds in such close proximity to its neighbours. Fights and squabbles constantly break out, but friendships and pair-bonding are very strong. They keep the same mate for life and produce one chick a year. The fledgling has to leap from the sheer cliff face into the sea below to find its dad, surrounded by thousands of others, and try to avoid being eaten by predatory gulls. Each year each guillemot pair comes back to exactly the same place on the cliff ledge and they defend it vigorously.

In the early decades of the 20th Century there were 100,000 guillemots on Skomer but numbers plummeted to just 2000 after the second world war, probably due to oil pollution in the sea. Now numbers are slowly recovering but the increase in storms may be a problem for them in the future. Professor Tim Birkhead from Sheffield University has led a 42 year study of the birds and reveals some of their secrets to Mary Colwell in this week's Living World.

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