Our nest box chick has been named by HSBC Malta Foundation, our new sponsor for this project. Jack (as in Jack-in-the-box) is doing very well and we have a video update of his progress to share:

Last week the team ringed Jack, the first Yelkouan Shearwater chick in Malta to hatch in an artificial nest. Wearing ring number EE02446, it is the 40th Yelkouan chick ringed this season and it posed for a photo in front of its nest entrance, before walking back into its home.

While Jack is a latecomer and will take at least two more weeks to develop to independence, many other chicks are fledging these days or preparing to fledge by coming out of their burrows at night to train their wings. The seabird team report that this very entertaining to watch, these fluff-ball chicks standing still while frantically flapping their wings up and down.

It has been a very exciting few weeks on the seabird project, on the 8-9th of June the team recovered 6 geolocators from Scopoli’s Shearwaters that we had fitted on the birds last year. The same night, they also recaptured a Storm-petrel with geolocator, which had been fitted 2 years ago! The geolocators are now being analysed for the data they recorded during these seabirds adventures out at sea.

Another very exciting update is that the first Storm-petrel egg has been found in a nest-box! These nest boxes were placed there for Storm-petrels in March 2012, but until this month hadn’t been used.

Check back soon for more updates on our nest-boxes and the Seabird team’s work.