Roseate terns on Coquet Island
Coquet Island is the only site left in the UK where you can still find a breeding colony of roseate terns.
A timid bird by nature, they are especially vulnerable to bad weather, predators and any variation in the availability of food. So we urgently need your help to protect their last island home. The video below shows just how special Coquet is.
But it's not just the roseate terns - each summer Coquet comes alive with over 44,000 noisy and boisterous seabirds.
Head out from Amble on the Northumberland coast and you will find graceful sea-going eiders, comical puffins, elegant kittiwakes, bold fulmars, noisy gulls and most importantly of all, a whole host of common, Arctic, Sandwich and the timid and rare roseate terns. These 'Red-listed' seabirds are facing the very real threat of extinction in the UK, unless we can find friends like you to protect their island home.
Our current funding only covers 75 per cent of what we need - can you help us provide the final 25 per cent?
Protect Coquet
By becoming a Friend of Coquet Island, you can help save these charismatic seabirds and the other wildlife that calls Coquet Home.
Coquet Island, just off the Northumberland coast, is the only island left in the UK with significant breeding numbers of roseate terns - a rare and timid seabird.
Help make a huge difference on just one small island.
What we'll be doing
Become a friend of Coquet Island and help give a home to roseate terns.
Back in 1984 there were just 18 pairs left in the UK. But thanks to the support of people like you, 118 pairs bred on Coquet in 2018. But there is still room for a lot more.
But that target is a long, long way off.
Become a friend of Coquet Island and play your part in saving the roseate tern from extinction in the UK and protect the island for all the seabirds and marine life that make their home here.
Why we need your help
- Help us fight off Yorkshire fog - a hardy grass - by putting down heavy formica sheeting covered with shingle.
- We need to build and maintain nestboxes so that our roseate terns have their own safe, clean and warm home.
- Your support helps us repair and build up the seashell terraces damaged by winter storms, ready for roseate terns to nest on.
- Help us protect roseate tern eggs and chicks from predatory gulls using a mobile phones! As soon as we see gulls gathering, we call a mobile rigged to speakers hidden among the nests, which play a gull distress call. Just one or two rings soon scares them off!
- By ringing and monitoring every single roseate tern chick, we can monitor numbers and your gift could help us research where our seabirds feed, making sure their feeding grounds are protected.
