Special report by Lesley Walsh
THE SCALE of a tiny island off the coast of Donaghadee belies the monumental importance to Northern Ireland’s birdlife and far beyond its borders.
The Copeland Bird Observatory celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, seven decades of playing a crucial role in education and raising awareness of bird conservation.
On Lighthouse Island, the second largest of the three Copeland Islands, important ornithological activities take place day and night which preserve the future of specimens like the fox sparrow, Radde’s warbler, barred warblers, woodpeckers, hoopoes, shrikes, nightjar and White’s thrush, for generations to come.
A celebration of the pioneering men and women who had the foresight to establish the Copeland Bird Observatory (CBO) in 1954, will take place on Saturday, April 27 at Belfast’s Malone Hotel as part of an ‘action packed’ anniversary year.
Key figures dedicated to the CBO are involved in a major drive on its large-gull colour ringing project, of herring and lesser black-backed gulls and carrying out an extended annual gull-nest census on Mew Island, the smallest of the Copelands.
Discussing the milestone year Dr Kez Armstrong, who was voted in to her post as president last April commented: “It’s been really interesting. I’d been sitting on the committee for the past four years and I was voted in at last year’s AGM in April, when the previous president, Joe Furphy (OBE) stepped down.
“I’m the first female to be president in the 70 years of the observatory, so no pressure,” she quipped.
“So that’s one of my main focuses in the next year, to ensure we have a really good celebration of 70 years of the observatory.”
Like everyone who volunteers at the observatory, Kez has been dedicating hours of her free time to the birdlife there. An ornithology and ecology consultant in her day job, Kez is among those who regularly make the small trip by boat from the mainland coast to Lighthouse Island from March to October where she has been acting as a bird ringer for ten years.
“Everyone does it on a voluntary basis and for us, at the observatory, it’s such a unique place where we’ve been conducting research for 70 years.
“It’s unique in that it’s a predator free place, unlike places like Rathlin Island which has problems from rats and ferrets. Our bio security is excellent,” she said.
Turning to the island’s population of Manx shearwaters, she said they are ‘phenomenal little seabirds’ which spend winters in Argentina but use the Copelands as their mating ground every March to August.
With a PhD in Kestrel Ecology, Kez is proud of the observatory’s ringing scheme which collects data on migratory and breeding birds, which is used for conservation purposes on ‘this strategically important spot’ for migratory passage species like the Manx.
Kez also has a particular interest in the gull and eider colonies both on Lighthouse Island and its neighbour Mew Island – adding though that the observatory doesn’t carry out ornithological research on the larger Copeland Island, being outside its remit as a privately owned island.
Looking to the year ahead, Kez said she was looking forward to championing the work of the observatory, ‘by increasing our exposure across Ireland and the UK in our vital role of contributing significant data to the understanding and protection of bird populations’.
Kez said she would encourage people to join the observatory as members, the proceeds of which ‘goes into the scientific research, helps maintain our buildings to continue to host weekends and will hopefully help us make it to 100 years’.
She said that the observatory was a special place to discover at firsthand and one she could personally attest to, considering it was ‘one of my favourite places’ in the world.
