- New England: the gold rush, The Observer, October 30, 2011.
3. For one hundred years black guillemots have made their homes around Bangor harbour.
The little auks with their distinctive black and white plumage and bright red legs, feet and throats have been fondly nicknamed “Bangor penguins” by residents.
Unlike penguins, the black guillemots can fly - a frantic skittering across the waves as they head for their nests in the breeding season.
The rest of the year they excel at bobbing about on top of the water before diving deep beneath Belfast Lough, streamlined and efficient in their hunt for butter fish - those slippery little creatures children find, but can’t catch, in rock pools.
This year, however, the nesting holes around the piers are mostly empty. The breeding pairs have lost eggs and chicks to a clever predator - the hoodie, or hooded crow.
Raucous and wily, the hoodies are small in number, but their thefts from the guillemot nesting holes have almost completely wiped out this year’s brood.
Dr Julian Greenwood of Stranmillis College has studied the black guillemots in Bangor for over 30 years. He rings and records the birds which have made their homes in convenient crevices around Bangor Bay and in the holes specially created by North Down Council in the piers when the harbour area was redeveloped.
Dr Greenwood is also chairman of the Northern Ireland RSPB committee, so he understands that the hooded crows are behaving true to type.
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