Fulmars prove to be a growing success story

It has a distinctive stiff-winged flight as it glides over the water, and a curious beak, thick, slightly hooked at the tip and with a pair of external nostrils at the top. It is not a gull but a petrel and a small relative of the albatross.

Fulmar chicks have only just hatched and will stay on the cliff ledges until the middle of next month. They will be well defended against any intruders.

The name fulmar means 'foul gull' in old Norse and refers to this bird's ability to squirt a foul smelling oily liquid at anything or anybody that strays within a metre of its nest.

Fulmars have enjoyed a huge increase in numbers and there are now more than 10 million pairs around the northern hemisphere.

In the middle of the 19th century, they bred only on the remote island of St Kilda but soon began colonising other parts of Britain. By 1930, they had reached Pembrokeshire, by 1944, Cornwall, and they have even managed to nest on the Norfolk coast which has

no cliffs.

They are now found nesting all round the British coast and at some inland sites in Scotland. They havealso nested at several inland sites in North Yorkshire and Cleveland, including Roulston Scar, at Sutton Bank, North Yorkshire, which is 25 miles from the sea.

Fulmars may still be thriving but theyare beingused in long-running research into the threat to all seabirds and marine mammals from plastic litter.

Analysis of dead fulmars from around the North Sea has found that more than 95 per cent of them have disturbingly high amounts of plastic in their stomachs.

Fulmars were chosen as an ideal target speciesfor the study because they feed on fish, plankton and carrion on the surface of the water. While doing so, they also swallow nearby plastic litter. They do not regurgitate what they have ingested.

The study estimated that during its life a single fulmar will swallow an average of 44 pieces of plastic, although one was found to have swallowed 1,603 pieces and another had 20.6 grammes of plastic in its stomach, equivalent to 2kgms in a human-sized stomach.

Ropes, polystyrene cups, mattress foam and cigarette lighters are among the items recovered during the research, being coordinated by the Marine and Coastal Zone Research Institute in the Netherlands.

Awalk along any holiday beach will reveal pieces of plastic washed up on the tide, despite the best efforts of local authorities to clear it up.

But this research reveals the impact on birds and mammals from such debris floating out at sea, a problem not only in the North Sea but in many other parts of the world.

There is not only a direct threat to them but also from the concentrated chemical pollutants released after they have ingested the plastics.

European legislation is being targeted at shipping and fisheries around the North Sea which are seen as the main sources of the litter, but unified action is also needed around the world for such measures to be fully effective.

Wader numbers are increasing across the region as the return passage gathers pace, with 14 wader species present at the weekend at the Blacktoft Sands reserve on the Humber. There are also good numbers of knot gathering at Spurn, many still in much of their red breeding plumage.

A first summer drake king eider has remained off Filey Brigg while a Cory's shearwater was seen off Spurn.

A Leach's storm petrel and two storm petrels were caught and ringed at Long Nab. Burniston.

Six quail were calling from barley fields near the car park at the RSPB's Bempton Cliffs reserve.

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CW 24/7/10