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Poo-drenched clothes and screeching birds: My summer as a seabird warden on Rockabill

What I Do: Micheál Fitzgerald (26) looks after Europe’s rarest breeding seabird

Micheál Fitzgerald, senior warden on Rockabill off Ireland's east coast, looks after nesting birds for the summer. Photograph: Conor Crowley
Micheál Fitzgerald, senior warden on Rockabill off Ireland's east coast, looks after nesting birds for the summer. Photograph: Conor Crowley
Micheál Fitzgerald
Fri Jun 23 2023 - 07:00

I remember my first day on Rockabill well. There were only a handful of birds, and it was actually quite peaceful. You feel like you’re off the map, even though Dublin is not far. But day by day more birds arrive, and before you know it, you’re waking up to screeching every morning.

I’m 26, from Cork city, and I’m the senior warden on Rockabill this summer. Rockabill is actually two islands in the Irish Sea off north Co Dublin: Rock, where we live, and Bill. Three of us arrived here on April 26th and we’ll look after the nesting seabirds until we leave in the first or second week of August.

The project started in the 1980s with just a few hundred parent birds, and every summer since there’s been someone out here watching the numbers increase. It’s funded mostly by the National Parks and Wildlife Service through BirdWatch Ireland.

The main reason we’re here is to look after Roseate terns, which are Europe’s rarest breeding seabird and are very endangered. We put out small wooden boxes to make it easier for the birds to nest and protect the eggs and chicks from the elements and the gulls. We get rid of a lot of vegetation on the island to make space for these boxes, and we spend the summer monitoring. Last year there were close to 1,800 parents nesting here.

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The main job is keeping track of every chick born on the island. There are about 1,700 nests, and the vast majority would have one or two chicks. We put a little identifying metal ring on their legs when their born, just to track them and to get an idea of how the population is doing overall.

We also have Common terns and Arctic terns. While the Roseate terns go to Africa after nesting – a lot go to Senegal – the Arctic terns are the farthest migrating species on the planet, and they’ll go to Antarctica after nesting. In their entire lives, they’ll have travelled the distance to the moon and back three times.

At the start of this season it was a little scary. We weren’t sure if the birds would show up, or if we’d be picking up dead birds every day with bird flu going around. There are lots of colonies in the UK that have been completely decimated – thousands of birds dying – but thankfully it looks like Rockabill hasn’t been hit too hard this year.

Every day there’s a bit of work to be done. In June we’ll work around the clock with chicks running all over the place. But generally speaking, we work 9am-5pm(ish), six days a week. If we have time off on a Sunday we might go for a swim, play an instrument or row about in a little dingy. One of the other two people here (an Irish man and a French woman) brought a projector so we watch movies too. To be honest, I love just sitting around here, it’s paradise. Watching the dolphins, whales, and all sorts of charismatic birds. Last year there were basking sharks too.

We’re usually covered up when they go for our heads – I wear a hat and some bubble wrap
We’re usually covered up when they go for our heads – I wear a hat and some bubble wrap

I like the work, but if you were sitting around doing nothing for three months, you’d probably go crazy out here. We’ve been extremely lucky, getting on well together. If you’re on an island with two other people, there are going to be days where they drive you nuts, but everyone here is good craic, relaxed and enthusiastic about the work. You hear the horror stories, but I don’t know if they’re true. Apparently one summer a pair of guys only communicated through stickers on the fridge. It is a long time if you don’t get along. They probably were better friends with the birds than each other.

We all look gas, head to toe in disgusting poo-covered clothes with big hats on. Photograph: Conor Crowley
We all look gas, head to toe in disgusting poo-covered clothes with big hats on. Photograph: Conor Crowley

It can get windy out here on the island too, which cools us down in our sweaty overalls. We wear them to protect us from getting pooed on by the birds. They peck you on the head and use poo as a method of defence – they’re pretty vicious, you do be drenched. The Common terns will dive bomb and peck you on your ears or neck. We all look gas, head to toe in disgusting poo-covered clothes with big hats on. Some wear two baseball caps. We’re usually covered up when they go for our heads – I wear a hat and some bubble wrap – but then you’ll get one bird that’s copped on and will go for your knuckles.

The living conditions out here are really good. We live in an old lighthouse keeper’s building, we each have our own bedroom and fridge, we turn on a big generator for six hours a day.

I’ve always had an interest in wildlife conservation. At college I spent a year studying gannets on the Saltee Islands off Wexford. That was my first taste of offshore island work.

With bird conservation, I try my best to be hopeful. It’s easy to get discouraged. But more and more the importance of this stuff is getting into the public psych and things are beginning to change.

[ My husband rescues people, and I rescue animals ]

If this work wasn’t done, you’d probably see a lot of species going extinct. With this work, we get to see a good news story. As the weeks go by we watch the chicks grow up, weighing them throughout the summer, and then one day when they’re almost as big as adults they fly out of your hand and are gone. That’s pretty cool.

– In conversation with Conor Capplis