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Kittiwakes in Cold Climates: Our 2021 Arctic Field Season


It is safe to say that the route to my long-anticipated field season in Svalbard was a little different from what I imagined when I first started planning it in January 2020. In the end, the basic principles did come to pass. I aimed to travel to the island of Spitzbergen, Svalbard (78 degrees North) in order to study a colony of black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) which live in the remote settlement of Pyramiden. Once there, I would use VHF tagging to track their foraging trip durations and establish patterns of coordination in their parental care. Do parents take foraging trips of equivalent length in order to share costs more equally? Does this pattern change depending on the personalities of the birds involved? These were questions I was eager to address, if I could just get there and collect the data…


COVID-19 of course, had other plans, and like so many other researchers that year, it soon became apparent that my 2020 field season was well and truly cancelled. By the time I was granted permission to travel in March 2021, I needed to adapt my plan to suit the post-COVID order. I hadn’t originally anticipated ten days in hotel quarantine in Norway, nor the nine COVID-19 tests I would require to get from Liverpool to Svalbard and back again, but with plenty of research and the support of my supervisor Sam Patrick and fellow SEGUL PhD student Eve Merrall, a plan came to fruition.

Ten days in Hotel Quarantine in Oslo provided plenty of opportunities to stave off madness by getting to grips with the equipment. Photo: F. McCully


The VHF equipment was bought, the COVID-19 tests were taken, the rifle training was booked (polar bears, you know) and away we went. The COVID-19 avoidance plan worked like a charm…now it was just the unexpected to watch out for.


We arrived in Pyramiden on 17th June 2021 to start ten days of fieldwork, devoid of contact with the outside world. This formerly-Soviet ghost town is often advertised as a piece of the USSR frozen in time, complete with its own statue of Lenin and numerous abandoned buildings which still bear Soviet insignias upon their shells. But something else has since moved in to cover the buildings. According to our Russian hosts, the kittiwakes first started to arrive in 1997 and began nesting on the building known as the ‘Crazy House’ (so-called because it was where the young families, and presumably noisy children lived) even before the humans had fully vacated the premises.

Our study site in Pyramiden, Svalbard. The building on the extreme left-hand side is the ‘Crazy House’, whose window ledges provide nesting space for our colony of kittiwakes. The crumbling (and somewhat creepy) playpark out in front was used as our VHF receiver station, with the antenna attached to the top of the slide. Photo: E. Merrall


Now, nearly 25 years later, the site provides a unique and exciting opportunity for research. Rarely are kittiwake colonies so accessible. This, coupled with the birds’ access to the nearby glacier (Nordenskiöld, but we called it Nordy for short) and our global responsibility to monitor vulnerable Arctic seabird populations, gives Pyramiden’s kittiwake colony high scientific value.


And so, to work! It was a bumper year in Pyramiden, and we reported 40% more kittiwake nests throughout the town than were counted in 2019.

A huge number of birds were breeding Pyramiden in 2021. There were 311 nests on the Crazy House alone, although we could only access those on the bottom floor. Photo: E. Merrall


Our aim was to process all breeding birds nesting on the bottom floor of the colony. Besides standard processing (e.g. weighing and ringing), 45 VHF loggers were deployed across the colony to gather information on foraging trip length over the following four weeks. To collect this information, I set up a VHF receiver in the dilapidated playpark outside the crazy house. Once frequented by the children of Pyramiden, the rusty slide now housed my VHF receiver and battery in a bear-proof box, with the antenna perched high above on the railings. Through this, I could hear the metallic beeps of the tag signals which meant the birds were safely tucked in their nests. As each tag was individually coded, I knew which birds were at home at any given time. When their signal was absent, that particular bird had left the colony to forage. This will allow me to estimate the length of their trip from the presence and absence of their VHF signals.


We also needed to collect personality data on as many of our breeding kittiwakes as possible. This involved novel object testing; presenting the birds with an unusual object and applying a behavioural scale to quantify their reaction. A big shout out to Butch, the plastic penguin toy (our novel object) who was subjected to a great deal of pecking by angry kittiwakes in order to test all 160 individuals for my project. These data will allow me to investigate if the birds’ boldness affects the strength of their parental care coordination.


Left- The finishing touches are put on a VHF logger. Right- Butch gets the ‘Evil Eye’ from a kittiwake during its personality test. Photos: F. McCully


As is tradition, we had our fair share of fieldwork problems, not least of which was a dead VHF receiver battery on day 7. Was a replacement handy in the abandoned Soviet mining colony? Nope! A combination of help from our Norwegian colleagues, the Norwegian Polar Institute, and kindness from our hosts in Pyramiden was needed to provide a replacement battery (which arrived the day we left, phew…) and implement a schedule where it would be swapped and recharged once a week. Thankfully, one problem which did not materialise was an encounter with a marauding polar bear. Although we didn’t manage to see any on this trip, as Eve rightly pointed out; “Better not to see one at all, then to see one at the wrong moment!”


By the time we left Pyramiden, we had caught and processed 257 kittiwakes (147 of which needed new rings); a new site record! Eve and I gained huge amount of hands-on experience for studying seabirds and our team made a substantial contribution to the long-term monitoring of the colony. The VHF receiver and tags stayed at the site for four weeks after we left, and were recently retrieved by the Norwegian Polar Institute. I can’t wait to start delving into the analysis. Outside of work, we also got to experience the incredible scenery and unique wildlife of the Arctic Circle, creating memories which we will treasure.

Svalbard shows off its stunning wildlife and dramatic backdrops. Photos: E. Merrall


Although I can safely say that organising an Arctic field season in the middle of a pandemic is one of the most stressful things I am ever likely to do, I can also say that participating in said Arctic field season, is one of the most remarkable things I am ever likely to do. I am immensely grateful to have been able to conduct fieldwork in a year where many others have been forced to abandon their plans (perhaps for the second time). It was such a privilege to be able to pursue my love of science in a place which so few others get to visit, and to witness even a small portion of the lives of these remarkable birds.


I want to thank Dr Samantha Patrick for her priceless help and experience. I am also hugely grateful to Eve Merrall for her unwavering commitment and invaluable help in the field. Thanks also go to the Norwegian Polar Institute (particularly Sébastien Descamps, Torjus Haukvik, Charlotte Hallerud and Erlend Lorentzen) for their crucial support and Olga Krylova for changing the VHF battery every week.

We depart Pyramiden, snatching a selfie with Nordy the glacier on our way out (L-R Finn, Sam and Eve) Photo: S. Patrick


Cover photo: Steph Harris

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