Give the roseate terns a home on Coquet Island
Roseate Tern on Coquet Island
Every year the amazing roseate terns fly back from West Africa, a distance of over 4000 miles to breed on Coquet Island, This is the only place they breed in the UK and only about 60-80 pairs breed here every year.
This makes the roseate tern the rarest of the UK’s breeding seabirds so it is absolutely essential that they always have a home where they are safe to rear their young without human disturbance.
This is why we monitor their nests 24 hours a day while they are on the island. Roseate terns use nest boxes that are put out each year, to raise their young, a behaviour that is unique to these special terns. The boxes significantly improve their chances, protecting the chicks from inclement weather and being eaten by gulls.
By sponsoring a roseate box, your donation will go to help provide 24 hour protection, preventing unwelcome visitors from landing on the island and disturbing the birds or worse still, trying to steal the eggs for their collections.
Sponsorship will also be used to clear the nest sites of vegetation, and to continue research into understanding their needs and the reasons for their decline since the1970s.
If you join us as a sponsor, you will be allocated one of our 60 boxes to ensure your numbered box is occupied and we will provide you with a certificate onto which you can enter the following information that we will provide as the breeding season progresses: Adult dates of arrival and ringing information if ringed (ie. age of birds and where they were born) Number of eggs laid and roughly when the first one was laid Number of chicks successfully fledged and ringing information (so that if you sponsor a box over a long period, you may well be able to identify it later as the adult that was previously, one of “your chicks”.
| Sponsorship options | |||
| 1-year | 3-years | 5-years | |
| Individual sponsor | £60 | £150 | £225 |
| Company sponsor | £150 | £350 | £500 |
Sponsor a roseate tern: together we can give these amazing birds a home
You will also be entered into a prize draw to win one of four places in my boat to sail around the island during the breeding season and see the roseate boxes on their specially built nesting terrace.
If you cannot make it up to the wonderful coast of Northumberland and are one of the lucky prize winners, we will send you a framed photo of a roseate tern on Coquet Island instead.
I very much hope that you will feel able to support the conservation work on Coquet Island, a place I love and have been working on for the past 30 years and which lies only 1 mile from my own home in Amble.
Sponsorship enquiries each year for the following breeding season can be made at any time, to my colleague, Mike Harris by email at mike.harris@rspb.org.uk or by phoning or texting him on 07738 029905.
Paul Morrison
Coquet Island Site Manager
