Storm Petrels in Kent, May 2006

The passage of Storm Petrels in Kent during 20th-28th May 2006 has been truly unprecedented:

  1. Never before have there been more than 19 in a year, and in most years there have been fewer than five.
  2. The total of 447 (up to the 28th) contrasts with a total of only 105 between 1952 and 2005, plus another 19 or so prior to 1952.
  3. There have previously been only two spring records, namely one found dead at Dungeness on 3rd April 1960 and one found stranded on Dungeness RSPB reserve on 26th May 2002.

The graphs below illustrate how exceptional the passage has been. I have extracted numbers for this May’s passage from the DBO and other websites, and the totals are not necessarily complete as some may not yet be published and there may be more yet to come! I’ve assumed different day’s and different site’s birds were separate, which is probably more or less true.

The majority that I have traced have been at Dungeness (412), with others at Copt Point (14), Bockhill (4), Deal (10), Sandwich Bay (4) and North Foreland (3).

 

Note that the 2006/07 total (July-June years are more logical than calendar years for this species) extends way beyond the limit of the y-axis in the annual totals graph, as does the week 21 total in the seasonal pattern graph.

 

 

Incursions into the eastern Channel may, however, not be unknown. Walpole Bond, in his Birds of Sussex, suggested that they were as common there in spring as in autumn, and recorded 28 being killed off Brighton in the first week of May 1859.

 

And if you think that is a bit strange, you should read Ticehurst’s 1909 Birds of Kent, in which he reports that one was “shot at Margate in a storm of wind among a flock of Hoopoes in January 1783”. I did not make that up!

 

 

Andrew Henderson

30 May 2006