Seabirds and our Collapsing Climate | Leo du Feu
28 guillemot
17 razorbill
17 unidentified auks
(guillemot, razorbill, puffin)
2 kittiwake
2 unidentified gulls
2 eider duck (male)
1 cormorant
These are the seabirds I counted along our stretch of shore yesterday.
The dead seabirds I counted along our stretch of shore yesterday.
Isle of May: Summer Cliffs | 26.5 x 38cm
We live in Burntisland on the east coast of Scotland. Nine kilometres to our south on the far side of the Forth estuary is Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city. The well walked Fife Coastal Path runs through our small seaside town, eastwards along our beach promenade then via sand and rock to Kinghorn and far beyond. I’ve been walking Burntisland to Kinghorn two and a half kilometre stretch every few days over the past week to count seabird corpses, my data being added to the counts of lots of other volunteers along the coast then being analysed by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH).
When large numbers of seabirds wash up like this it’s called a ‘wreck’. On the east coast of Scotland wrecks are most likely to occur when continuous days of storms from the east churn the sea to such an extent that birds simply cannot dive effectively enough to catch their various prey species. If the storm is severe or long or both then seabirds starve and over coming days their bodies wash onto our beaches.
Other than being incredible to see their beauty at such close quarters (these are birds which are normally far out at sea or nesting on remote islands and inaccessible cliffs) it’s pretty distressing.
Looking to Bass Rock, Isle of May | 24 x 28cm
But does it matter?
Seabirds are long lived species, certainly compared to most ‘garden’ birds. Did you know that robins live an average of just 2 years and blue tits, robins and blackbirds only 3? Well, cormorants and shags live on average 11 or 12 years, kittiwakes 12, razorbills 13 and eider ducks 14. Guillemots typically live for more than 20 years and bird ringing has shown the oldest recorded guillemot to be over 40.
Do not approach, seabird research data collection | 18 x 35cm
So maybe it doesn’t matter. If guillemots have a bad year because of a storm they still have another 19 years in which to grow lots of chicks and re-bolster their population. Except they typically don’t start breeding until they are 5 years old. And they aren’t like shorter-lived birds which tend to lay multiple eggs in a year. (Blue tits lay 8-10 eggs, and often a second clutch once the first is complete). Guillemots lay only one egg which has to then spend 28-37 days being incubated, and another 18-25 days after that before the chick is ready to fledge. So every egg really counts towards the future of the colony. And guillemot colonies are on sheer cliffs, often low down where big storms can easily wash away eggs and chicks.
But what’s all that got to do with our collapsing climate? Storms have always happened haven’t they?
Well yes they have, and so of course have seabird wrecks, but as historic and current human-made carbon emissions cause our climate to get more and more unstable storms are increasing in strength and in frequency. It’s happening already, the world over. It’s going to keep on happening, and it’s going to get a lot worse.
Isle of May | April 2016
It isn’t just about storms either. In fact the bigger effect of climate change on these seabirds is thought to be more indirect. Seas are altering and warming rapidly and consequently the habits and distribution of the main prey species of these seabirds – fish, primarily the lesser sandeel – are changing. Will Scotland’s shags, guillemots, razorbills and everyone’s favourite, the Atlantic puffin be able to sustain themselves as their traditional prey changes in abundance, quality, size and distribution and perhaps vanishes altogether?
And art. What’s all this got to do with art? I say a lot. Artists look and artists ask, artists try to understand and to interpret. Art shows people, it educates and inspires, and it starts conversations. Artists use their work and words to comment on the issues of our times, as they always have. Thankfully, at last, awareness is growing and is growing rapidly. Of the climate crisis, of biodiversity loss, of the Sixth Mass Extinction. Art is a part of all that, and must and will continue to help grow awareness and spread the word.
In my own art I don’t think I overtly talk about climate, habitat destruction, the issues facing seabirds and all the rest. Often I feel guilty about that. But I talk about it in the words which usually accompany my artworks, be it notes in my sketchbooks, exhibition captions, on my social media, in workshops I’m running, in the articles I write and in the conversations I have.
Nesting Kittiwake | 25.5 x 29cm
In the artworks – paintings and sketches, very many of them made out on location – what I aim for is to celebrate our wildlife and the places it inhabits. My art is a way for people to see these things, helping some become more familiar and inspiring some to take more notice of what’s around them. Honestly, when you start to know wildlife and to understand little bits about it here and there, you just want to learn more and more and more. Did you know you can tell whether that’s a male or female great tit on your bird feeder by looking at the width of its vertical black tummy stripe? On the male it’s a much wider line. Did you know that hedgehog eating the cat food you put out for it last night doesn’t just rely on your garden but will travel as much as one to two kilometres each night to meet all its foraging and courtship needs?
When you know and love these things you can hardly bear it when you start to realise just what dire straits the natural world is in. Learning that there’s every chance your great grandchildren will never ever get to see a hedgehog. Because hedgehogs will be extinct in Britain by then, unless we do something about the fencing and paving (/gravelling/decking/fake-grassing) of our gardens, the strimming and flattening of our “untidy” patches, the growth of our roads and cars, the removal of hedgerows from and spraying of chemicals all over our countryside (and gardens). How can one fall asleep at night knowing that and knowing that it’s our fault?
This is how – with the broken heart also comes the knowledge that it doesn’t need to be this way! It can very easily not be this way, if only we all choose that path. There is so much we can do. All of us, whatever our means. We can share our knowledge and passion with our family and friends, join a wildlife or environmental charity, write to our elected officials, set up a Facebook group sharing stories of and tips for helping local wildlife, dig a pond, stop mowing a patch of lawn, drive less or not at all, fly less or not at all, switch to a genuinely green energy supplier, buy local, write to our bank to say we’re withdrawing our money unless they stop investing in fossil fuels, start a neighbourhood wildlife club, take part in citizen science wildlife monitoring schemes, write to big businesses and tell them you expect them to be environmentally accountable, buy our children binoculars and take them for a messy explore in the woods, buy ourselves binoculars and go for a messy explore in the woods...
Start by just taking time to walk and sit in nature.
Absorb its endless wonders.
Love it.
Seabird Cliffs: Isle of May | 31 x 41cm
Links & References
Oldest recorded common guillemot
Long-running ‘Scotland By Rail’ project in which Leo explores his home country by public transport, primarily by rail – countryside, town, city, wildlife, museum, gallery…
All images & text above © Leo du Feu | Produced for A La Luz, 2021 | Please do not re-publish any of the above without prior written consent
