North Sea Oil Rigs Swarm With Birds

To a goldcrest, the 40,000-ton bulk of a North Sea oil rig can mean the difference between life and death.

The tiny bird, weighing a mere fifth of an ounce, is one of dozens of bird species that migrate in their thousands across the North Sea in spring and fall.

Many alight on oil rigs to rest. Others, disoriented by bad weather, circle around rigs--sometimes for hours--awaiting better flying conditions.

The birds’ passage does not go unnoticed.

The 200 or so oil installations scattered around the British North Sea, one of the world’s key oil fields, make a unique network of observatories for studying their movements.

For many North Sea oilmen, often working long shifts for weeks on end, bird watching is a natural recreation.

“I always carry a miniature pair of binoculars in my boiler-suit pocket,” said one offshore oilman and keen bird watcher.

The North Sea Bird Club has been going for 10 years, with financial support from several major oil companies.

Thousands of sea birds have met slow, sticky deaths because of oil spills, but North Sea oilmen care deeply for the birds that share their harsh environment.

Several North Sea oil fields--Fulmar, Tern and Dunlin, for example--are even named after some species of the 4.25 million birds that breed around the sea.

According to Sandy Anderson, the club’s recorder and a part-time researcher at Aberdeen University, all sorts of offshore personnel are involved, including roustabouts, engineers, medics and radio operators.

“These chaps know what they’re looking for,” Anderson said.

Over the past decade the club’s 500 members have recorded sightings of 206 species, including several rarities.

The British Ornithological Union, which lists all the birds seen in Britain, recently accepted the sighting of a black-billed cuckoo on an oil rig 180 miles east of Aberdeen as the first British sighting of the species, Anderson said.

A native of the western United States, the cuckoo should have been migrating south to winter in Chile at the time it turned up over the North Sea, Anderson said.

Rare sightings occur when birds are blown off course by high altitude jet streams, he said.

Perhaps the most unusual sighting was made by the pilot of an oil inspection submarine.

The captain’s report stated: “At a depth of 130 meters (430 feet) and later at 140 meters (460 feet) we observed a bird swimming. At first we thought it was a guillemot, but the shape of the bill later led us to believe it was a razorbill.”

The bird came within three feet of the submarine, possibly attracted by the lights, the captain said. “I have never seen a bird at this depth before,” he added.

North Sea oil rigs are occasionally visited by dense clouds of hundreds of thousands of birds, reminiscent of scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s film “The Birds.”

One such “bird storm” was recorded by Stephen Walker, the radio operator on the Maureen platform.

“On opening the control room door I thought it was snowing, but on closer inspection, I found the sky full of birds--blackbirds, thrushes, fieldfares, snow buntings, lapwings and even some Canada geese,” he reported.

“Ten to 15 owls hunted among the flocks and 20 roosted on the heavy deck netting. As well as about 50 short-eared owls there were several long-eared and at least one barn owl.”

The oilmen have built up an extensive database of bird movements which has revealed that British land birds, like wrens and woodpeckers, travel much farther than previously thought.

“The recording has been highly sophisticated,” said George Dunnet, professor of Natural History at Aberdeen University.