After a very successful Canon netting week with the North Thames gull group and the Guernsey seabird ringing group at our local tip with over 1000 new gulls rung to which over 300 were lesser black back gulls Paul Veron target species. It was now time to start our seabird ringing and monitoring around the Bailiwick of Guernsey this year is being a year of mixed fortunes. We are now about midway through the seabird season. Our first trip was up to the humps North of herm to visit Godin and Longue Pierre to ring cormorants which was quite successful once again this year we have managed to ring about 40 cormorants with metal rings and colour coded rings this year on two of our main breeding colonies the largest being on Longue Pierre with about 25 breeding pairs and Lihoumel with about 14 breeding pairs. Our first visit to jethou and two islets on 16 June two ring shag  little egrets and early gull chicks was of mixed fortunes with most of the nests empty on both shag and gulls it was not hard to see that there was a problem on  the two islets and Jethou we only managed to ring 22 shag and a handful of gulls it looks like the biggest threat to our seabirds is the brown rat as we noticed a lot of rat workings and even saw two or three rats scurrying through the undergrowth though the shag numbers have been dwindling over the last few years has this been the problem all along total of seabirds round so far this year not counting gulls is 40 cormorants 69 shag nine guillemot though the egrets heve bred well no Crevichon we were too late to ring any there was about 30+ young birds on top of the brushes all fledged and took to the wing as we approached