Diet of common guillemot and razorbill at East Caithness, Buchan Ness to Collieston Coast and Isle of May in 2019

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This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

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https://doi.org/10.5285/3d90a2b0-9a9e-4e39-8986-9082d1ec529e

This dataset contains prey items of common guillemot (Uria aalge) and razorbill (Alca torda) observed during the 2019 breeding season at East Caithness Special Protection Area (SPA), Buchan Ness to Collieston Coast SPA and Isle of May National Nature Reserve, off the east coast of Scotland. The diet of these two species has been studied on the Isle of May since the 1980s. To our knowledge, the only previous studies of diet were undertaken at Buchan Ness to Collieston Coast SPA (in 2006, 6km to the north of the site used in this study; and in 2017 & 2018, using a similar protocol as in 2019), and previous studies of diet have been undertaken at East Caithness SPA (2017 & 2018).

Publication date: 2020-04-15

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Format

Comma-separated values (CSV)

Spatial information

Study area

Spatial representation type

Tabular (text)

Spatial reference system

GB place names

Temporal information

Temporal extent

2019-04-01 to 2019-07-31

Provenance & quality

Seabird studies on the Isle of May NNR were begun by Mike Harris (CEH) in 1973 as part of the Isle of May Long-Term Study (IMLOTS), which is a Key Site in the UK Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s (JNCC) national Seabird Monitoring Programme. The methods for calculating diet are included in the Species Account in this document and have been consistent since all seabird monitoring was standardised from 1987. The protocols are employed in the assessment of the diet of common guillemot and razorbill.

The basic approach to assessing common guillemot and razorbill diet is observing prey carried in the bills of breeding adults returning to the colony to feed the young or, in the case of common guillemot only, to display to other adults. All fieldwork, sampling and data handling was carried out by experienced and trained staff to defined protocols agreed to meet the objectives of the work. All data were collected in the field in notebooks and field data sheets. These were transcribed to spreadsheets after each check was made and files backed up on CEH servers. All notebooks and field sheets are archived at CEH Edinburgh. The databases used were all quality controlled at source.

The integrity of results, the quality of reports, the relationship to contracted deliverables and the punctuality of reporting are all subject to management vetting and tracking within CEH.

Licensing and constraints

This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

Cite this dataset as:

Andrews, C.; Newell, M.A.; Harris, M.P.; Bennett, S.I.; Wanless, S.; Daunt, F. (2020). Diet of common guillemot and razorbill at East Caithness, Buchan Ness to Collieston Coast and Isle of May in 2019. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/3d90a2b0-9a9e-4e39-8986-9082d1ec529e

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