Many smeared and exhausted seabirds wash ashore by storms

Claude Velter, Rehabilitation Center for Birds and Wild Animals Ostend: “This is a guillemot that we have to wash thoroughly. The feathers are full of fuel oil. The guillemot that normally lives far out at sea has never seen people, let alone felt soap and its whole He has hardly been on land in life. They stay constantly on the water and float around. Any speck of oil that floats is immediately pulled against their feathers and makes them leak. They are very vulnerable to that.”

Because the treatment is stressful, they also receive extra power food and fluids. After washing, they also end up under the hairdryer. “We have now received about 20 seabirds in a short time, some of which have been smeared with oil, so oil was certainly spilled illegally during the storm. Then they are less likely to be caught. But the majority of the animals were normal. exhausted and not covered in oil. And that’s something we’ll see more often.”

But for those exhausted birds there is no immediate conclusive explanation. In any case, seabirds like guillemots and grebes are common in successive storms. Further research will have to show what is going wrong with the colonies.