Fulmar Petrel - 1949

Fulmarus glacialis glacialis

Mathew knew of only one, caught on a cod line in Tenby Bay Dec 1980.  Appeared in 1930 at Flimston Stack Rocks and landed on cliffs there in 1931.  Since then, they have been present in the breeding season at many cliffs in the north, west, and south, but have not yet been recorded (1948) laying eggs, although breeding in the ajoining county of Cardigan (1947).

R.M.Lockley, G.C.S.Ingram, H.M.Salmon, 1949, The Birds of Pembrokeshire, The West Wales Field Society

Fulmar - 2003-07

Fulmars are now one of the commonest breeding seabirds around the coast of the UK but only a century ago were virtually unheard of as far south as Pembrokeshire. Their spectacular spread around the coast of the British Isles in the last century  and a half is one of the best documented of any bird species. The Seabird 2000 survey estimated that there were just under 538,000 apparently occupied sites in Britain and Ireland.

In Pembrokeshire Fulmars can now be found virtually everywhere around the coastline. They nest on sheer cliff faces on small ledges in small groups and sometimes as individual pairs.  Near Saundersfoot they nest behind the tangled roots of cliff edge trees, on the predator free islands sometimes on wide accessible ledges but always they try to find as much height as they can.  Only where the cliffs are comprised of low sloping sandstone or are exposed fully to the glare of the sun are they absent. They are fairly easy to count as they occupy their sites for many months each year, and are only totally absent in September and October when they are at sea moulting.

The number of occupied sites increased steadily in the county from the first known breeding site at Flimston in 1940, to what seems to be a discernable peak of near to 2,500 sites in the mid to late 1990’s.  Annual counts are very variable as many of the sites are occupied by non breeding or prospecting pairs.

Between the counts from 1985-88 and the Seabird 2000 counts, Fulmar numbers in the county jumped from 1,409 sites to almost exactly 2,500 sites. However these totals  mask the changes from 1996, when detailed annual counts on Ramsey, Skomer, Skokholm, Castlemartin, St Margaret’s and Caldey, suggest that the trend in subsequent years has been at best stability and more probably the population is showing a tendency to a steady decline. The distribution maps also show a decline in tetrad occupancy

Steve Sutcliffe

Fieldwork 2003-07 (based on 490 tetrads)

Red = breeding confirmed = 61

Orange = breeding probable = 6

Yellow = breeding possible

Total tetrads in which registered = 67 (13.7%)

Fulmar - 1994

Breeding resident

Mathew (1894) notes just one record, at Tenby in December 1890. Fulmars appeared at Flimston Stack Rocks and at Strumble Head in 1930, thereafter being seen prospecting the cliffs of the mainland and islands with increasing frequency (Lockley et al. 1949). Saunders (1976) dates the first egg found, near Flimston, at about 1940; another was seen on Skomer in 1949 and a chick hatched near Mathry in the same year (Fursdon 1950 ). Numbers had increased to 298 pairs occupying the cliffs of Pembrokeshire by 1969 (Operation Seafarer) and 1,409 pairs by the 1985-1987 Seabird Register survey. Colonies occur on all suitable cliffs with the largest on Skokholm (99 occupied sites in 1991), Ramsey (187 sites in 1992) and Skomer (742 sites in 1990).

Birds frequently visit cliff sites from November but do not normally lay until mid- to late May, the young fledging from August to early September. Adults move out to sea to moult following the fledging period, some becoming flightless. Normally only a few juveniles are seen inshore from mid-September to mid-October.

Violent south-west gales during the autumn and winter can drive Fulmars into the Irish Sea. When the wind veers to north of west they beat back past Strumble Head in impressive numbers, 1,000 on 1 September 1985 and 5,500 on 10 February 1988 being the highest totals recorded.

Dark morph, or 'Blue', Fulmars have been noted off Strumble Head between September and December and at Cemaes Head in August. They have also been seen in the vicinity of colonies at Dinas Head, Skomer and Skokholm in the breeding season, so the "dark phase chick, almost ready to fly" at Eastfield on 27 August 1960 (Davis 1960) might indicate that 'Blues' sometimes interbreed with our Pembrokeshire light morph birds.

 

Fieldwork 1984-88 (based on 478 tetrads)

Red = breeding confirmed = 71

Orange = breeding probable = 4

Total tetrads in which registered = 75 (15.7%)

Donovan J.W. & Rees G.H (1994), Birds of Pembrokeshire

Fulmar - 1970s breeding

Red = breeding confirmed

Orange = breeding probable

Yellow = breeding possible

Fulmar - 1980s winter atlas

The BTO winter atlas showed that Fulmars were present in most coastal 10km squares during the winters of 1981-82, 1982-82 and 1983-84.

The darker the colour, the higher the relative total count for each 10km square.  The darkest blue represents over 216 birds. Fulmars occupy their breeding sites on many days throughout the winter.

Graham Rees 

Fulmar - 1894

Species account from M Mathew, 1894, "The Birds of Pembrokeshire and its islands"

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