Month: June 2025

Threat level – intense

More from Seaton Carew’s little tern colony

Horus, the Egyptian god of sun and sky, is depicted as a falcon. Sometimes he is almost a man, but bird-headed, and sometimes he is fully bird. In his hieroglyph he is a falcon perched in profile, but in decorative icons he takes on the silhouette of a hovering raptor, wings outspread. I never understood the awe and terror this shape could inspire – not until the kestrel came.

It had been two days since my first stint with the little tern wardens at Seaton Carew, and I was looking forward to another afternoon of watching fluffy chicks bimble on their wibbly legs, and chatting to the passing public. I’d muted the warden WhatsApp group for a bit, so I’d missed the first avalanche of notifications. Kestrel attack. Chick taken. Kestrel attack. Chick taken. Kestrel attack. Adult taken. Kestrel attack, attack, attack.

Attempts had been coming around every twenty minutes all through the long hours of June sunlight. With chicks of his own to feed, the male kestrel had been taking advantage of perfect visibility and a concentrated population of chicks at their most vulnerable stage, hatchlings mostly unable to take cover under the pipes and pallets provided. The sheer speed of the predation was shocking to witness, and the decision was made in the warden chat group to stop the blow-by-blow reports of loss in favour of a slightly less traumatising end-of-day round-up. But as the numbers mounted, it was difficult not to think darkly – if this rate of attrition were to continue, would any chicks survive to fledge and escape along their migration route to Africa?

Wardens are well aware of all the ways these little birds can be taken. Gulls can smash and gobble eggs, dogs can chase and catch fledglings when they first head to the water’s edge. By night, foxes try their luck and are seen off with laser pens, as is the little white cat that night warden Dean has nicknamed Ghost. Even hedgehogs get in on the action, swimming through shallow tidal pools to get to the prize of an egg. But nothing is quite like the kestrel.

All wardens are trained in the use of this laser pointer, which deters night predators like foxes without causing any damage to them. This image and featured image of mother with chicks both by Steve Lindsay.

Other threats can be seen coming and counteracted by the human guardians with laser and air horn, or with screeching and mobbing by the feisty little terns. Although as the UK’s smallest seabird they seldom land any pecking blows, clouds of dozens of birds are usually successful in bothering the lumbering herring gulls away. But nothing is quite like the kestrel!

A little tern mobs a herring gull, which turns its head in mid-air to scream at the smaller bird
Image by Matthew Livsey

As soon as I get out of the car, I can hear the absence of bird chatter. Anyone who’s seen a sparrowhawk strike in their garden will know the stunned hush that follows it, often for days, as the survivors hunker away in fear. For the little terns there is nowhere to hide, and a real air of exhaustion and despair has washed over the colony. Whatever they do to deflect the kestrel, he simply ignores them, swinging round again and again with indestructible focus for the hunt. The raids have been so frequent that the mobs of defenders, small and intimidated in the first place, have now dwindled into desultory attempts by half a dozen or less against an undeflected foe.

Three little terns mob an unconcerned kestrel against a pink clouded sky at dusk
Image by Matthew Livsey

The kestrel watches from a distant roof, unseen as a sniper. The kestrel moves neither gaze nor intent. The kestrel circles higher and higher until it is a dot, and then a trick of the eye a blue mile above. The kestrel slides in front of the sun; and I see it then! How Horus came into the minds of people a millennia ago, majesty and death and the blinding brightness of a god! But I can no longer see the real bird.

We are still craning upwards in fear, lost in the heat-thin clouds, when he strafes in low over the perimeter fence. It’s a split second, but by the time we turn and cry out, he is already making the horrifying grip-and-yank gesture of feeding. Another chick is lost, and there are five more hours of daylight left. More hours again tomorrow as the year builds to its solstice. No respite from the intensity of this threat.

Can the colony rally? Will any chicks make it to adulthood? The next few days will prove critical, as fledging begins…

More to come soon!

You can support the work of the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust by subscribing as a member here, or perhaps by volunteering your time to the little tern crew – or one of the many other conservation projects the Trust runs. Not in Teesside? Wildlife Trusts exist across the UK, have a look for your local opportunities!

One good (little) tern deserves another, and another, and another…

How did Teesside’s little tern colony go from 3 successful fledglings in 2021, to 141 survivors in 2024? A case study in positive human intervention, dedication and persistence…

“That’s a nice lift” says Tony, as the adult slice upwards from their invisible nests among the sandy shingle at the southernmost end of Seaton Carew beach. A regular volunteer watching over the terns, he loves the way they barrel roll so their bellies catch the sun bright white, then suddenly flip their pale grey backs towards us so that against the blue-grey haze of the horizon the birds disappear.

They are a constant magic trick. Although I can hear their little raspy screeches before I even get out of the car, they are only easily visible when in motion, and they drop into rest on their nests like flipping the switch on a cloaking mechanism.

Today is a finer day than when I last came, bundled up against a sudden wind-harried drop in May’s temperature. On that day everything was grey, and the male terns were spending every ounce of their energy on constant forays to the tide for sand eels. For a courting tern, nothing says “have chicks with me” like a beakful of silvery sand eel. The warden that day, Emma, told me that the eel numbers seemed good and that mating was taking place all over the strand. Occasional flappings of raised wings like little white flares in all the grey showed me where breeding pairs were getting down to business. A month later and the same brief flashings of wing-white erupt where birds land and settle on their shallow scrapes – an estimated 80 nests – where both eggs and chicks are now present.

Colin volunteers to show me a chick through the huge tripod scope set up on the promenade for curious passers-by to learn more about this protected site. I’m looking at the fluffball for a good 20 seconds before I even see it, the speckled, sandy camouflage markings are so successful. More chicks hunker under one of the half-pipe ridge tiles laid out across the site as emergency shelters, looking like a clumpy sand-drift. Only movement gives them away; living as they do under a panopticon sky full of predatory larger gulls and hungry kestrels, their natural instinct is to stay very, very still.

The Tees Valley Wildlife Trust looks after this site, working together with Durham Wildlife Trust, which protected this tern colony when it was breeding north of here at Crimdon. Tony tells me how they migrate here in April from the Gambia, looking for shingle beaches and spits to inhabit. He waits for their arrival, and feel properly ’empty nest’ when they leave again.

Tidal activity being what it is, those shingles the terns seek can change their topography year on year, or disappear completely, and even during the course of a breeding season the colony can get washed out by high tides and storms – so the birds are flexible about where exactly they settle. When the colony started to fail in Crimdon, they moved south to Seaton. This year’s colony has been joined later in the season by birds believed to have been washed out of their first nests at Long Nanny near Beadnell.

The warden on duty today, Derek, tells me that in the six years this site has been active, the local people have taken it to heart. Teessiders have always pitched in to help protect the terns, whose eggs are so vulnerable to predators and accidental damage, and who will simply leave their nests to die if disturbed by humans. In volunteering to go on watch, I’m following in my mother’s footsteps – she watched them at weekends in the 1980s, when their breeding site was over the other side of the Tees mouth in South Gare.

Having a warden and volunteers is a huge part of the success story that has seen fledgings increase exponentially at Seaton. From 2021 to 2022, the jump in chick numbers surviving to migration stage was 3 to 89! What changed? The Trust got funding for a fence. A simple fence. Split cedar pales hammered into the sand to warn off dog-walkers, information signage, and paid wardens with the back up of dedicated and knowledgeable volunteers who can explain and engage. The global population of little terns is classified by the IUCN as ‘of least concern’, despite their acknowledgement of a 30% decrease in overall populations in the last decade – like every species, they definitely need protecting now, as rising sea levels and increased storm severity will undoubtedly make their survival difficult in the decades to come.

As I’m standing at the promenade wall, sketching the scene, a young lad jumps up onto the wall and is quickly warned down by Derek. But it’s not Derek’s style to be punitive, that gets you nowhere. Instead he always makes a point to talk with people encroaching on to the site, and in no time he has the whole family chatting, observing nests, and checking out the chicks through the scope. I talk to the mother and the younger sister, who are entranced by the fluffy babies and had no idea the birds came here every year. It’s excellent to pass on the little bit of information I’ve learned, tentatively trying to forge another link in the chain of connection between humans and nature. It’s a small start towards finding my own way to act as a custodian and a good ancestor.

If you’d like to do something positive, meaningful and sustainable about nature, biodiversity and climate, you should absolutely start by giving what you can (membership, donations, volunteering) to the organisations already on the ground, doing the work. That could be a global charity or your local wildlife trust.

For my fellow Teesside readers, please if you can, become a member of the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust and consider becoming a volunteer warden. If that’s not possible right now, check out other ways you can benefit from the Trust’s amazing work, for example by visiting one of their reserves or taking part in their 30 Days Wild challenge with the family.