The colony at the award-winning Royal Quays Marina started from a couple of pairs which Marina Manager, Matt Simms, first noticed nesting on a bare patch of railway ballast at the back of a bin compound. Matt and the marina staff were keen to encourage the birds, and with measures such as reducing the vegetation before the birds arrive at the end of April and by erecting electric poultry fencing to stop raids by the local foxes, the colony prospered year on year. However, whilst this guarded patch of ground was very much to the tern’s liking, they were not welcomed by all the marina users, some of which found their territorial behaviour and aerial attacks threatening. Hard hats and umbrellas had to be provided for boaters passing by on the nearby marina pontoons! Their favoured site had also been previously earmarked for development of further marina facilities.
The answer was to create ‘tern island’, a raft of their very own, moored out of reach in a shallow area of the marina. In 2014, the marina staff converted a marina pontoon, surfaced it with crushed scallop shell (gifted by a fish processor on nearby North Shields Fish Quay), along with chick shelters, and towed it out to a mooring. When the terns returned from their winter break in late April, they were lured onto the new raft with hand painted clay decoys (a rather large net having been placed over their old home). After a few anxious days whilst they checked it out, we were excited (and relieved) when they took to their new home and enjoyed a bumper breeding season – the best one yet!
On the raft the birds suffered less from disturbance and passers-by and marina users were not subjected to the usual aerial bombardment. Typically, around 60 pairs breed each year and chicks are ringed as part of a monitoring project. The terns thrive on a rich diet of sand eels and herring fry which come close by into the estuary and the nearby coast. The birds are seen flying backwards and forwards with a fish in their beaks. Matt says, “We see it all in three and a half short months, from first arrivals and pairing to nesting and egg laying, then hatching chicks, to fledging, and then they’re off” At other times of the year the raft provides a welcome perch for the many cormorants, ducks, and gulls. It seems that everyone’s a winner, and we are pleased that wildlife and a busy marina can co-exist side by side.
The common tern has been adopted as the environmental mascot of the marina. “They have really become part of our identity and they mean so much to us” says Matt. “Each spring our spirits are lifted when we hear that first call of the terns high over the marina, and we know our summer, which will be constantly punctuated by their chatter and activity, is about to begin. Its nice to think that they can find a home in a former coal dock, overlooked by apartments.”
The terns have sparked a wider environmental interest, and the marina are keen to do whatever they can to support other wildlife and raise support protecting our seas. This summer a new floating eco-system was installed with support from the Tyne Estuary Partnership, which will provide an additional site for salt tolerant vegetation and habitats above and below the water as well as nest site for waterfowl, in what is otherwise a hard urban environment. The marina has also lent its support to World Ocean Week, with staff undertaking a marina clean and holding a plastic free lunch party for customers, just to show that with little effort and thought we can all take steps to reduce the amount of plastic which might one day end up in our seas.
