Life on the Edge of the World - Rangatira Island

The adventure is over.....January 4th

2010-02-07T13:26:00.000-08:00

The black robin

What a busy weekend. All the packing took a huge amount of time and due to all kinds of circumstances we didn’t know until 8.30 on Sunday morning that we were going to leave on Sunday at lunchtime. Of course we were organized and by 12.30 we had everything, and I do mean everything, on the rocks, all ready for Glen and the Acheron to pick us up. When we spotted the boat coming around the corner of Pitt Island we knew that that really was it. We were headed for home.

Views from the top of Rangatira Island on a clear day:

We all sat on the deck, surrounded by buckets and fish bins watching the island as it got smaller and smaller on the horizon. There was the Summit where we had spent Christmas afternoon, and the Trig where we had spent Christmas night. There were the cliffs where Melanie and Brigitta had gone to on Melanie’s birthday when the winds were about 40 knots. There was Whalers Bay, my favourite place, where we had swum in the rock pools. There were the skuas flying around Front Landing. And in the bush somewhere were all the robins, the tomtits and all the other forest birds, continuing their lives as though we had never been there. We were all very quiet.

At 2pm, over the noise of the engines and radio, we heard the marine radio; “This is Chathams fishermans radio, Chathams fishermans radio.” The forecast for the next three days is wind, rain and 4 metre swells. We had left just in time........

Photos from Rangatira:

GPS and logistics - January 1st

2010-02-04T18:59:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! We had a very quiet night last night, or at least we were very quiet and I think all of us were in bed well before midnight. Brigitta was due to put out the very last camera this morning, and I was going to go with her at 4.30 to sit on the rocks at Whalers bay and be one of the first people to see the sun rise on a new decade. It was wet and rainy though, so although the sun must have risen it is never so impressive seeing it through the clouds, so I went back to bed and to sleep.

Sunrise on Rangatira Island:

Sunset on Rangatira Island:

For the last week Brigitta has been in charge of GPS-ing the nests. GPS, or global positioning system, is a US based navigation satellite system. We use a hand-held device that connects to a few of those satellites, usually 6 or 7 of them, and then calculates where we are in the world to a distance of about 10 metres. This will give Melanie a map of the Island with dots on it showing exactly where all the nests are. Brigitta also records the height of the nest from the ground, how high the tree canopy is above the nest and how big the nest is. These data will give Melanie yet another piece to help her solve the puzzle of the Island birds lives.

After Brigitta has taken her measurements, and this is when we know that we are really leaving in two days, we take the pink nest marker tags down. The Island definitely looks less festive without its pink tags.

Cleaning the kitchen......

The other big job of the next few days is of course to pack. Imagine the huge piles of gear, let alone food and clothes, that you need to bring for a three month research trip on a remote island. The food of course we have eaten, but everything else, including our rubbish, has to be carried home. We have a lot of electronic gear, and as we travel to and from the Island by fishing boat, we need to make sure that it is double bagged against the dreadfully corrosive effects of sea water. Everything else goes into watertight buckets.

Buckets packed waiting to go:

Once we have a bucket packed we take it down to Front Landing and store it there until we actually leave. On Sunday we’ll carry all the buckets across the rocks at Front Landing to the point where the ship will pick us up. We can’t do it any earlier in case there is bad weather and high seas and we don’t want anything to get washed off the rocks. Of course we also have to clean up the hut, eat up lots of leftovers, say goodbye to our favourite birds and places, and close everything up before we leave. I’d better get to it!

Rangatira Island Street - an endless soap opera: December 31st

2010-02-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

It’s the last day of the decade, and we’re spending it dodging rain showers and finding out the last bits of bird gossip to complete the endless soap opera that is the life of the Rangatira Island Black Robin population.
On Tuesday we caught and banded two female robins up on Whaler’s Track. Melanie knew that there were three un-banded black robin moms in that area. But we didn’t know which of our newly banded girls belonged with which robin male. Annika was sent to find out. She worked out that we’d banded Findlay James’ mate pale blue, metal, white, fluorescent pink and Tawhitis’ mate dark green, metal, yellow, fluorescent pink.

Aren't they cute!

The un-banded female, which we’d still love to band, turns out to be June, Cash’s mate. Annika found their nest this morning and they have one egg. We’re not going to be here to see it hatch, which is a shame because if she had been a girl we would have called her Roseanne!

All these extra little bits of information makes the black robin database as complete as possible so that there is an accurate picture of who is related to whom.

We are hungry!

I went back to KD 24, Raginis’ and Lorenzos’ nest, this morning to see my favourite chick. He is probably a male as he is huge and fluffy, so I’ve named him Pip short for Pipsqueak! He may have fledged when I go back tomorrow, so I wanted to say goodbye to him and wish him well.

Regarding tomtit news, we were worried that we had disturbed Agatha and Eiko last week by banding them, but were delighted to go back today and see that their chicks Aroha (named after my niece) and Ben and Zoe (named after my oldest friend’s children) are still growing and are also due to fledge soon.

It’s hard to believe that in a few days the forest birds will be getting on with their lives and not only will we not be here to see it, we’ll know nothing about them until the next time a research team arrives to update us.

Eggs - care required when handling! - December 30th

2010-02-02T14:44:00.000-08:00

As it is a wet day here on Rangatira, one of my jobs this morning was to sort out the eggs that we have collected and pack them safely away.

Black robin eggs are small and cream coloured with light brown speckles on them. The female will lay up to three eggs at once and each one will weigh about 3 grams. The females do gain weight before they lay the eggs, but with an average female weighing only about 20 grams, the eggs are a huge percentage of her body weight!

What a collection of eggs!

The egg shell has a thin membrane between it and the chick developing inside, which you have probably seen if you’ve ever peeled a hard boiled hen’s egg. The egg shell and membrane are permeable, so they let gasses and water in and out of the egg through tiny pores in the eggshell.

The developing embryo in the egg gets its food from the egg white, which is full of protein and liquid and the egg yolk which is full of nourishing fats. By the end of incubation the egg will have lost about 10-15% of its weight due to loosing water across the shell. After developing in the egg for about 18 days the embryo will start pipping. First it pips internally, which means that it breaks through the membrane between it and the shell. The parents can tell when this is happening and stay closely on the eggs during this time. Once the embryo has made its way though the membrane, it uses its egg tooth, a small tooth like projection on its beak, to break open the shell. This is a huge effort for such a tiny creature and the chicks hatch out quite exhausted. They do still have a bit of the yolk left inside their bodies in an internal yolk sack and this gives them food and energy for a couple of days after hatching.

The black robin chicks are then nestlings for approximately another 21 days before fledging. Sometimes the female will have one nestling and still be sitting on an egg that failed to hatch. When this happens we remove the dud egg from the nest. We very carefully break the egg and write down why it didn’t survive. We also dry the shells so that Melanie can take them back to the lab. She then puts the shells under a scanning electron microscope and looks at the location and numbers of pores that are on the egg shells.

A nicely dried egg

Dissecting eggs that have been incubated for over 20 days, can be really smelly work and we make sure to do it outside not to cause too much of a stink in the hut. One egg that we dissected last week was so rotten that it exploded as soon as Melanie broke it, and the smell was spectacularly bad! Thankfully the one I did today just looked like it had been scrambled inside the shell, and only smelt a little bit. So I carefully washed it out and put the eggshells out to dry, then went inside to a hot cup of tea and some wet weather board games.

Front Landing - the Riviera of Rangatira - December 29th

2010-02-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Rangatira waterfront. This is where we all leapt off the boat that first day, and probably is where we’ll leave the Island, depending on the weather and wind direction of course. There are other landing areas but Front Landing is the closest to the hut. Front Landing has a rock platform with the sea on either side of it. The rocks are home to all sorts of wildlife including the shore plovers who squeak constantly while you’re on the rocks. There are also the skuas, which for some reason don’t try to eat the plovers. If I had a neighbour who squeaked that loudly all day I know I’d get grumpy. But it seems that skuas and plovers happily coexist.

A skua:

There is a lot of seaweed and tiny snails on the rock platform. The snails make half of your steps crunchy and the seaweed (a green weed called Ulva) makes the other steps slippery. The platform is far from even and you have to watch yourself as there are some deep chasms and pools here that you could fall into.

Slippery seaweed:

Seals also like basking on Front Landing, away from the busier seal colonies on the other side of the island. You should always keep 10 metres from a seal and never get between it and the sea so that it can escape if it feels threatened. But what I wonder, should you do when there is sea on both sides of a seal? I just made sure to give her a very wide berth.

A seal on the move....

When you look up towards the Island you see the beginning of the forest with the Rangatira Island sign and the chair. We’ve all had moments sitting on the seat watching the sea and reflecting on what has happened during the day. It’s a great view too, over the rock platform and out to Pitt Island.

What a view!

There is so much I’ll miss when I leave here, but sitting here, watching the sea and the wildlife will be near the top of that list.

An unsung forest bird - 28th December

2010-01-31T11:53:00.000-08:00

We’re mist-netting as much as we can at the moment to make the most of the still weather. Gales are forecast for the next couple of days and apart from checking nests there is very little that we can get done in the cold and rain. We’ve caught a number of un-banded robins in the nets and some tomtit fledglings too, so it’s been successful work.

We also caught some Chatham Islands Warblers. They are modest little brown birds, with pointy beaks whose song sounds like a cheerful jig. Warblers don’t come when we clap our hands or call them and we can’t bribe them with worms to show us their nests.

Chatham Island warblers are common in forested areas all over the Chathams but only live in native forests and can’t survive in habitats that have been modified. Thankfully there is still a lot of habitat like this left in the Chatham Islands, so they are not endangered.

Chatham Island Warbler chick:

They raise one clutch of eggs per year and sometimes are brood-parasitized by the shining cuckoo. The call of the shining cuckoo is one of the signs of spring as they migrate back to the Chatham’s from their winter homes in the Pacific early in the spring. Like other cuckoos, shining cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and on the Chathams this unlucky bird is the warbler. The warblers don’t seem to notice that they suddenly have a huge egg in their nests which hatches into a chick much bigger and more demanding that their other chicks. They just work incredibly hard to feed and raise it as if it were one of their own.

But this year the shining cuckoos have been late in their arrival to Rangatira and we’ve only just started to hear them calling now, over a month later than last year. As most of the warblers have already fledged their chicks, the cuckoos will have problems finding a suitable warbler nest for their eggs. It seems that this year there won’t be any poor warbler parents who will be tired out by feeding a giant and hungry imposter.

Due to their accommodating nature, the Chatham Island warblers were the first birds trialed as foster parents for the black robin eggs when there were really few black robins left in the early 1980s. The researchers knew that taking the eggs away from the robins would make them lay another clutch. They hoped that the Chatham Island warblers would be able to bring up the robin fledglings. But as it quickly turned out, warbler parents are not able to supply robin chicks with sufficient amounts of food (robins are after all almost twice the weight of warbler).

The researchers quickly changed their strategy and chose Chatham Island tomtits as foster parents for black robin chicks. Hence tomtits played a significant role in the survival story of the black robins, and as such went down in the conservation history.

Of rocks and volcanoes - December 27th

2010-01-28T15:16:00.000-08:00

We’ve had a few adventures that have involved rocks the last few days with the trip to the Summit and the sleep out on the Rangatira Trig.

So it must be time for me to delve into the geology of the Chathams. The cool thing about geology is that you get layers in rocks and if you drill deeply into them, or they happen to be exposed on a cliff face for example, you can read millions of years of history like you do a book. The modern rocks are at the top and the deeper you go the older the rocks. Well, you can do that if you’re an expert, which I most certainly am not!

Here however is what I do know:

The Chatham Islands are on the Pacific plate, which is the same plate as much of the South Island of New Zealand. The Chathams are also part of what used to be Gondwanaland. Gondwanaland was a great southern continent which over eons slowly split apart to form South America, Africa, India, Antarctica, Australia and New Zealand. The way that the experts know this is because of fossils which have been found here. Continents that used to be part of Gondwanaland have fossils of spores of mosses and fern and pollen from conifers (cone bearing) trees.

Rangatira itself is made up of sediments which accumulated from a volcanic vent which erupted about 4 million years ago. Often volcanoes erupt at the edge of continental plates, but here at the Chathams we are right in the middle of a plate so the volcano was probably what they call a “hot spot” which are areas beneath the earths crust that are so hot that they are able to puncture through a continental plate.

What I can tell you for certain is that there are enough flat rocks on Rangatira Trig so that you can fit four mattresses comfortably and no one is in danger of falling off!

A torrent of Titi - 26th December

2010-01-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

We spent last night on the rocks up at Rangatira trig, with amazing views of the surrounding islands, and Woolshed bush and Front Landing, our usual home, at out feet. By the time we got up there it was about 9 pm and as we’d done already some serious walking that day, we were all quite tired. So we made ourselves comfortable in our sleeping bags wearing piles of clothes and even more clothes within easy reach just in case it got cold in the night.

The Skuas eventually got used to us being there and started swooping less frequently. The sun set, in a blaze of colour, behind the North summit. As it was getting dark, I closed my eyes and went almost off to sleep…..until there was a quiet “Whoosh” in the air about 5 metres above me. And another one. Then more and more whooshes and as I opened my eyes I saw hundreds of Titi (also known as muttonbird) flying laps around the rock that we were sleeping on. They are incredible flyers! They are so fast, maneuvering past each other at a nail-biting speed. It was just after dusk and these are birds on a mission. They have been out at sea all day fishing and now it’s time to get themselves safely back to their burrows and feed their chicks before having a few hours sleep and leaving as dawn breaks the next day.

As with so many of the birds that we see here on Rangatira, the Titi nest on the ground so are very vulnerable to introduced predators. Thankfully, yet again, Rangatira is pest free so the Titi are able to breed. The young were a traditional food source for both the Chathams Moriori and still are for the Stewart Island Maori. But are otherwise they are a protected species. I don’t know the collective noun for Titi, but it was a real torrent that evening. We watched the passing parade as it gently got darker and darker and darker.

The next time I woke to see the stars in the sky clearer than ever before (there are absolutely no lights anywhere near), and the next to hear the dawn chorus of the forest birds in the bush way below us. I slept through not only the Titi going back out to sea, but Brigitta having to move her mattress in the middle of the night as a young broad-billed prion fledgling decided to cuddle next to her. Lucky for the prion fledgling our presence on the rock allowed it to live another day.

A broad-billed prion chick - not the one with Brigitta

During a normal night the resident Skuas would have pounced on it and eaten it for breakfast.

I saw the sunrise, and by 8 am we were all awake enough to pack up our bags and mattresses and stumble back down the hill to the hut for a huge pot of coffee and breakfast.

Christmas day adventures with the Christmas Giraffe - 25th December

2010-01-26T13:34:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! It was yet another beautiful day here (I’m beginning to think that the forecast we get on the mainland of “Rain in the Chatham Islands” is all a big plot to keep mainlanders away from these beautiful islands). We had a bit of nest checking to get done in the morning and then made an executive decision that we were going to the North Summit. As we’re a bit out of the way here, Santa Clause didn’t find us on Rangatira, but we were visited by a very rare Christmas Giraffe, and decided to take him with us on our Christmas adventures. The summit isn’t a bad place for Christmas lunch. Pitt Island stretches out to the west, Star Keys is visible in the distance to the north and the Pyramid in the South. The Skuas were a bit weary and kept a close eye on us, either perching on South Summit in the distance or doing a swoop by to see what we were up to.

As sunscreen can only do so much to protect against sun-burn, we eventually had to abandon the summit and went back to the hut. After we drank a few gallons of water each, there was yet another trip to the rock pools at Whalers Bay for a refreshing dip, again with our visitor.

Then it was roast lamb for supper with a special quiche for the vegetarian and roast potatoes and an apple pie for pudding. Despite never having cooked a roast before, I am glad to say that I have inherited my fathers roast potato gene and we ate really well. I managed to mystify my fellow islanders by insisting on daft hats throughout the meal, with one for the giraffe too of course. Not a German tradition I guess.

And our last adventure for the day was a trip up to the Rangatira Trig, a relatively flat area of rock with some good views, for a Christmas night sleep out. The four of us and our Christmas Giraffe set off just after 8 pm to make sure we got through the bush before dusk, with our mattresses and sleeping bags, all set for our big adventure.

It’s (not) beginning to feel a lot like Christmas - 24th December

2010-01-25T13:56:00.000-08:00

It’s Christmas Eve here on the Island though there is no way of telling it without having a calendar on the wall. It is a beautifully sunny day and we had a long and leisurely breakfast on the back deck, trying to avoid the ever present flies. We decided to get all the checking and weighing done this morning again to give us time for frivolity this afternoon. We’re planning a dip in the rock pools at Whalers Bay, followed by some sparkling wine and lounging on the rocks.
And I of course am planning some singing. I love Christmas carols, and hope you’ll join in singing this Rangatira Carol with us. It’s to the tune of 12 days of Christmas, and I’m not writing the whole thing out! You know how it goes;

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me
12 Kakariki
11 Chathams Petrels
10 Broad Billed Prions
9 Chatham’s warblers
8 Storm petrels
7 Blue penguins
6 Oyster catchers
5 Chathams Snipe
4 Bird researchers
3 Chatham’s tomtits
2 Fierce Skuas
And a black robin in a Ngaio Tree!

Quiz answers

2010-01-24T14:10:00.000-08:00

The answers to the quiz from December 18th are here
Black robin = nest C
Black-backed gull = nest H
Blackbird = nest F
CI Oystercatcher = nest B
CI warbler = nest A
Dunnock = nest E
CT tomtit/female = nest G
Snipe = nest D

Four go to the beach - 23rd December

2010-01-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

We had an afternoon off yesterday. As many of the chicks have fledged and the nest checking takes much less time these days, if we work hard in the mornings there is less to do in the afternoon. So we took the spare time in the afternoon to go paua hunting in Thinornis Bay. Even though we got there just before low tide, the waves were huge, due to the gale-forced winds during the previous few days. The pauas are big in Thinornis Bay. I’ve never seen paua this big before on the mainland. But as no one except researchers land here on Rangatira, they aren’t fished and have plenty of time to grow.

When we collect them, we get only a few and this leaves a population of adults around to keep the generations going. Paua have planktonic larvae, which means that the larvae get carried around in the ocean current, and it’s possible that the larvae can chemically detect areas of rock that are covered with seaweed to settle on. Seaweed is a paua's favourite food. You can find all three of NZ’s paua species here but we were looking for the black- footed paua. There is a commercial fishery for paua in the Chathams with the meat selling for about $100 per kg! And we’ve all seen their shells in tourist shops and probably have some at home too. They are a valuable resource for the Chatham Islands.

The rock pools here are relatively shallow and quite high up the beach too, so finding paua isn’t something which is necessarily going to get you wet and mucky. That is except for today when the waves were cranking in, covering the rocky platform which a few days ago I was walking around with no fear of wet boots.

The sea can be like that. One day it looks benign and as though you’d love to go for a dip, and the next only the local seals feel comfortable surfing in the waves. But we were careful and triumphantly carried back enough paua for a small feast.

Birthdays and more family updates - 22nd December

2010-01-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

It’s Melanie’s Birthday today. After watching “Mama Mia” last night, we woke Mel by singing “Happy Birthday” to her and making her open her present which was wrapped up in the same tape that we use for marking paths and flagging nests. We then had a long and lazy breakfast with field trip pancakes and lots of coffee, so we were a little late getting into the bush this morning.

The first nest I checked this morning was AS08, a tomtit nest which is high up in a clump of Muehlenbeckia. The parents weren’t going back to the nest to feed the chicks immediately, so I waited and eventually two little fledglings came down to the ground to feed too! These are a pair that we haven’t banded shortly before fledging as their nest was out of ladder reach, but it is good to see them flying and feeding.

While we’re on the subject of friends, here is our pre-Christmas update on some of our bird families:

Drusilla’s three chicks have successfully fledged and have been seen taking their first flying lessons in Ikes Bush. Mum and Dad, however, are still very busy feeding the fledglings as they struggle to even pick up their own worms. The adult birds might feed their fledglings for several months after the chicks officially leave the nest.

After their first clutch died we’re hoping that Fast Eddie (the hut tomtit) and his mate will build another nest very soon. I spent an hour yesterday following Eddie, but he wasn’t showing me where his new nest is. “My” tomtit nest, SF01, has a handful of chicks which we will make sure to band before we leave the Island. The female on that nest has been named Agatha and is one feisty bird, telling off everyone who comes to weigh her chicks. Fat Freddie’s mate, Wilma, is also fierce, so we’ve great hopes for her three chicks too.

We’ve lots of robin news, and each time we meet up together for meals we swap which nests have chicks and who might be rebuilding ready for clutch number two. Yesterday Brigitta saw that Gary (so called because his leg bands are Green, metal, also known as Aluminium, Red and Yellow) chicks had fledged and that little Jolina and Silas, named for her niece and nephew, are doing well.

We’re hoping for more eggs and fledglings before we leave, so will keep on going out every day and see what’s new in the forest bird population.

Hurray for insects - December 21st

2010-01-22T16:47:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness we don’t have sandflies here! Can you imagine a month or so working in the bush with those wee jobbies biting you every few minutes? It’d be enough to send out a ‘PAN PAN’ to the nearest passing fishing boat to get off the Island.
There are fleas though, everywhere. We do our very best not to get seabird fleas (which are misnamed as they will bite us too if there isn’t a seabird handy) by wearing gaiters in the forest to stop them going up our boots and into our trousers. You do sometimes get bitten though and it is never the very best idea to go anywhere near your sleeping bag in your outside clothes. No one wants to sleep in a flea infested sleeping bag.

We have some other huge, charismatic bugs on Rangatira, which I am slowly getting used to. There are wetas everywhere. Whenever I dig out a seabird burrow after accidentally collapsing it, there are usually several big wetas that scuttle off into the bush looking offended.

Another weta lives in the tap of our outside water tank. Whenever we try to fill up a large pot of water, the weta gets washed into the pot. This one had the misfortune to be washed into the boiling water that I had heated up for my first shower here. I was terribly nonchalant and fished it out and chucked the carcass out into the bush. It can’t have been more than a day later when another one moved back into the same tap! Weta like living in holes, and a little used tap is a haven for them; until it all goes wrong of course. Weta apparently eat the carcasses of dead seabirds and as there are tonnes of dead seabirds throughout the forest, the wetas would be able to get themselves some good quality protein from this sideline.

The Chatham Islands have over 800 species of insects and on islands like this one they are a very noticeable part of the ecosystem. There are perfectly circular holes in most of the dead branches, which are bored by weevils. And Alex has already told you about the huge spiders which live here too. Thankfully I haven’t met those yet. I might not recover.

And finally, when talking about all things creepy and crawly I must mention the meal worms that we have brought with us from Christchurch. The birds love them and apart from observation and cunning, meal worms are the best bird-finding tools around. Meal worms pupate and eventually turn into beetles if they aren’t used as bird food first.

So, although some days I hate to say it: “Hurray for insects”.

Everything you wanted to know about bird anatomy but were afraid to ask - Dec 20th

2010-01-21T19:39:00.000-08:00

You must know by now that until 3 weeks ago I knew very little about birds. In case you are in the same boat as me, here is a crash course in the really cool things about birds that you didn’t know that you didn’t know:

During the breeding season female birds have a brood patch. Feathers are a great insulator and will trap air around a bird to keep it warm. But during the breeding season, the female needs to keep eggs warm as well as herself. So she develops a patch on her abdomen where she can put her warm skin into contact with the eggs and keep them at the right temperature.

At the base of the tail, birds have what looks like a huge pus-filled pimple. When you squeeze it, a pus-coloured liquid actually does come out of it. This is the preen gland and the substance which comes out is the preen wax. Birds use this to preen their feathers and make them waterproof.

Talking of feathers, baby songbirds hatch out of the egg without feathers. Melanie tells me that songbirds have ‘altricial’ chicks, rather than ‘precocial’ chicks. While precocial chicks hatch with feathers and are ready to follow their parents a few hours after hatching, such as ducklings, altricial nestlings are naked, have closed eyes for several days and their skin looks like the skin you see on a supermarket chicken. The skin is so thin that I think that I could see their organs if I looked closely enough. After a few days, the nestlings get covered with rows of short pins, which look a bit like candles. The top parts of the pins break open (in black robins when they are around 9 to 10 days old) and eventually the new feather emerges from the pin. This stage is called “pin break”.

We look out for when nestlings are at pin-break stage, because this is the time when we film the nests. After that the nestlings start looking more like miniature versions of their parents rather than characters auditioning for the Muppet Show!

Baby birds have huge beaks and the inside of their mouths are brightly coloured. This colouration makes it obvious to the parents where they should put the food.

The birds’ beaks also seem to be at adult size from a very young age, but despite these huge mouths, bulging eyes, big bellies and a general air of ugly helplessness the nestlings really are terribly appealing.

Stephen Fry was here! December 19th

2010-01-20T13:41:00.000-08:00

Like all good huts there is a lot of history in our little hut in Rangatira.

The hut includes its very own Edmonds cookbook, a well thumbed tome with some wonderful comments scrawled in different coloured inks. After one recipe, which shall remain nameless, it says “Don’t go there!” “Not even if you’re desperate” and “Waste of good ingredients!” To be fair, the Edmonds’ Oaty apple loaf I made yesterday has almost gone already and we’re planning on adding some congratulatory comments along the lines of “Yes, cook this one,” and “Great for second breakfasts.” We’re eating well here but after a 5am start for Annika and I today, I really needed that second breakfast.

There is a height chart on the door into the store room with the tallest person being someone called Dave and the shortest real person being Jane Haxton. I’m ignoring Ben Dover and Neil Downe, for obvious reasons! In between there is a role of all of those who have worked on the Island including some well known names in NZ conservation.

There are maps and pictures all over the walls and a slightly alarming “Danger” sign on the knife block that has nothing at all to do with using sharp knives.

My favourite bit of hut ephemera however is the log book. I hope that there is an older one in the archives somewhere as our current one only starts in 2002. Some teams write in it daily, often recording in the 3rd person what has been happening each day so you’re not sure who the author is. Others just put in a summary of their work at the end of the season. It’s fun just to read through to see the huge range of projects that have been carried out on this very special Island.

Under January 14th 2009 is the following entry

“Thrilled to bits to have encountered a black robin” Stephen Fry, BBC, London.

I, in turn, am also thrilled to bits that THAT Stephen Fry was indeed here!

Quiz: Can you match these birds to their nests? - December 18th

2010-01-19T14:33:00.000-08:00

Much of the work here other than mist-netting involves looking for birds’ nests. For Melanie it is easy to tell which bird lives on which nest, but for the rest of us birding beginners, it isn’t always so obvious.

So, it being the last day of school in the real world, we’ve come up with a quiz. Can you match these birds to these nests, without peeking at the answers or asking an expert? (Answers will be posted Sunday 24 January.)

Good luck!

Nest A

Nest B

Nest C

Nest D

Nest E

Nest F

Nest G

Nest H

These are the birds which built the nests:

black robin

black-backed gull

blackbird

Chatham Island oystercatcher

Chatham Island warbler

dunnock

Chatham Island tomtit (female)

snipe

Answers tomorrow!

They breed ‘em big out here - 17th December

2010-01-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

Another day off for me and while the rest of the crew go mist-netting, I take myself off to Thinornis Bay to continue my intertidal wanderings. I’d been out there with Brigitta earlier this week, but we only had time to go “Gosh, it’s pretty here” before heading back to work checking nests, so it needed a repeat visit. The fact that you can walk there without petrel boards is a major bonus, as I really don’t want to be walking on boards on my day off. The limpets are huge! They are probably a species of Cellana limpet, but as I don’t have my seashore guide with me, I can’t be certain. I can say for certain though that these guys are about four times the size of the biggest limpets on the mainland.

Limpets

I can, however, tell you the species of chiton. This one's species name is pelliserpentis (Latin for snake-skin) and as their mantle looks just like a snake skin, this is one that I won’t forget in a hurry. Chitons are molluscs too, just like the limpets, but have 8 small shells rather than one big one and have teeth on their tongues which are made of iron! They creep around the rocks living off whatever they can scrape off the rocks with their tongues. And again, these guys are massive.

Sypharochiton pelliserpentis

The very first animal I saw when I leapt onto the rocks that first day, apart from Melanie and the old team, were the tiny snails that live at the top of the spray zone. These guys live all over New Zealand, with the same species living on the rocks at home in Dunedin.

There are also barnacles at the same tidal height, lots of them, just in the right places to rip into my knees when I kneel down to take pictures. These are crustaceans like lobsters and I always imagine them as little shrimps sitting on their heads waving their hairy legs out into the current to catch whatever might be floating by. I could spend hours here, but with the end of my half day off fast approaching, I reluctantly packed up and went back to the hut for lunch.

Snails and barnacles

Mist-netting with beginners - December 16th

2010-01-17T12:07:00.000-08:00

Although as research assistants, Melanie thinks we’re great (she has to agree as I’m cooking supper tonight and have threatened not to feed her should she disagree), none of us has ever had anything to do with birds before. We’re learning heaps, but mist-netting with a bunch of beginners must be stressful for even the calmest of people.

A mist-net is maybe 3 metres high and various lengths (ours are 6 or 9 meters) and made of such thin black nylon thread that the birds hopefully can’t see them. We string them along a straight-ish length of track and leave them alone to go and set up our station. The station is a model of efficiency, with boxes and bottles and a place for everything. Everyone knows the procedure.

Once the station is set up, we check the nets for birds. Here is where the “we’re just a bunch of beginners” becomes a problem. When the birds get caught in the nets, they really get caught. One silvereye even got caught by its tongue. That can’t be comfortable!

Freeing kakariki

It takes a lot of experience to get the birds gently and safely out of the nets and neither Annika, Brigitta nor I can do it yet. When we see a bird in the net, we yell for Melanie and the poor thing has to run up and down, freeing the birds and popping them into clean bird bags (some of which are pink gingham!) and hanging them up in the trees around the station until we are ready to process them.

First we get some samples, which can include preen wax, feathers, parasites and blood samples. Then, if they haven’t been banded before, we band them. This morning, Melanie let me band my first ever bird! I was of course very cool about it (Hah! My hands were shaking like leaves) but somewhere on Rangatira this afternoon is a little dunnock with some brand new bands on its match-stick thin legs. May it be the first of many!

Black robins and the problem of inbreeding - December 15th

2010-01-17T12:05:00.000-08:00

One of the main reasons why Melanie is interested in studying black robins isn’t because they are very friendly and produce super-cute chicks, but because they are terribly rare. Today, there are only about 160 black robins alive, of those 120 or so live on Rangatira Island and about 40 live on Mangere Island. All of the black robins are descendents of Old Blue, who we talked about a few posts ago, and her mate Old Yellow. In the early 1980s, when Old Blue, Old Yellow and three other robins (named Old Green, Old White and Old Red ) were the only black robins alive at that time, they were forced to breed with close relatives because there were no other robins around. This is why all black robins alive today are very closely related to each other (they are one BIG family, really), although there have been several generations of robins since Old Blue and Old Yellow were a happy couple.

Newly hatched black robin chick:

When all remaining individuals of a population are close relatives, as it is the case in the black robins, biologists like Melanie talk about an ‘inbred’ population. The problem with inbred populations is that they might not be able to withstand environmental changes or an outbreak of an infectious disease. And here is why:
A group of related individuals usually share a lot of their traits, such as eye colour, big ears, immunity against a disease. Ever heard your Auntie say: “you have the same nose as your grandfather Edgar”? Of course, you have the same nose as grandpa Edgar because you are related to grandpa Edgar and as a matter of fact you share about a quarter of your genes with him (and within the quarter of shared genes is the shape of your nose!). Maybe you think that the shape of your nose is not a big issue, but some traits can increase your survival chances.

For example, one family of birds may have better eye sight than another. Bad eye sight might not matter when there are plenty of big worms and bugs around, but let’s say that conditions change and for some reasons there are fewer and only smaller worms and bugs around to eat. In this case, the eagle-eyed birds will do much better than the others and will find more food for themselves and their chicks. Some of the chicks will inherit the good eye sight and again will raise more chicks than birds who can’t see that well. So over time more and more birds will have the good-eye-sight-trait.

In a big, healthy population there are lots of different versions for all kinds of traits around – good eye-sight, small beaks, long tongues. These get mixed and matched in every new generation, with chicks getting one set of genes from mom and another from dad. If the conditions change, chances are good that some individuals have the right traits to survive. Maybe you can already see the issues that arise in populations that are inbred.

Weighing a black robin chick:

Firstly, since there are only few individuals around and they are all related, there is no great variability among the traits they have. To stick with our example, if no bird has the eye sight required to find enough small worms and bugs, it could lead to the extinction of the species. Another problem comes from the fact that sometimes genes don’t work properly. Fortunately, since there are 2 copies of genes, the second copy might be enough to get the right function. But when the parents are closely related, they might pass on the same faulty version of a gene and there is no functioning version around. In bad cases this can lead to deformities or death, which is often observed in small and inbred populations.

The black robins today are the most inbred a population can become, because all are descendents from one happy couple, Old Blue and Old Yellow. And this is why the black robins are the perfect study object for Melanie to find out how they are dealing with environmental changes today.

What is that tree called? - December 14th

2010-01-14T13:37:00.000-08:00

Melanie is teaching us to identify trees at the moment as we’ll need to be able to tell them apart later on when we get to finishing off the nest cards. Melanie wants to know what types of trees the birds are nesting in to see if there are any patterns.

The Chatham’s have a fabulous flora, much of which is endemic, which means that it only lives here. Chatham Island Forget-me-nots are probably the best known ones and are widely cultivated on the mainland. One even decorated the top of my birthday cake in Dunedin before I left home!

Chatham Island Forget-me-not:

Firstly Melanie introduced us to the Chatham Island Akeake. They were once used for both firewood and fence posts all over the Chathams and apparently their wood smells like curry when it’s fresh. The ones that we’re interested in tend to be dead and full of holes which make great nests for the robins, tomtits and starlings alike.

Chatham Island Akeake:

The Ngaio trees are flowering, so it’s incredibly easy to tell them apart from everything else. Their tiny white spotted flowers litter the paths like confetti at the moment. Even if you can’t see the flowers, Ngaio trunks can be quite twisty and the bottoms of them remind me of wrinkly elephant’s feet.

Ngaio tree flower:

The kawakawa are also easy to tell as their leaves are very round and heart-shaped. We made tea out of these one evening and none of us thought that it tasted of much. An hour or so later though I was rushing out of my sleeping bag to “water” a bush, so I reckon that it is quite diuretic and haven’t tried it since!

Kawakawa leaves

My very favorite tree on the mainland is the lancewood and I was just delighted to be introduced to the Chatham Island Lancewood and equally delighted with its Maori name; Hoho. The young of the Hoho doesn’t have that prickly, gangly, juvenile phase which makes the mainland ones so distinctive. This is why I hadn’t even recognized it as a lancewood. This little bit of learning is changing the bush in my mind from a bunch of bird containing greenery into separate and recognizable individual plants.

Chatham Island Lancewood

How to monitor a bird's nest - December 13th

2010-01-13T14:53:00.000-08:00

I can’t believe that we’ve yet to explain why we visit nests every few days and how we record these important data. Since we’ve only three weeks to go on the Island, it’s about time that I introduce you to the nest cards. So, everyone, meet a nest card:

Front of nest card:

Once you find a nest you fill out a card, letting everyone know the location and height of the nest and what species it belongs to. The upside of this job is that as the nest finder you go down in history as your initials are included in the nest name and recorded for posterity on the card.

The back of the card is just like a nest Plunket book! Whenever we visit to check on the chicks we write it on the card. And just like Plunket, we also weigh the chicks and check on their development. We also film each nest once during incubation (when the female is sitting on the eggs) and once after the chicks have hatched.

Back of nest card:

All of the data on the cards together with the films will give Melanie many happy hours of work once she gets home. With it she’ll be able to find out more about the reproduction and behaviour of birds that live on a predator free island.

Not the only mammals on the Island - December 12th

2010-01-12T18:05:00.000-08:00

You know there is a saying that you are never more than a few metres from a rat? Right now we are probably further from not only rats but almost all other mammals than you are. There are no bats on Rangatira, but mammals other than us do land here. And they seem to do so whenever I go fishing! New Zealand fur seals are beautiful in the water, lazily waving a flipper at me, totally at home just metres from the waves crashing onto the rocks. And even when she goes away I can’t get a bite! I guess as soon as she showed up all sensible blue cod suddenly remembered an urgent appointment elsewhere and no longer even pretended to be interested in the flagging tape that I’m using as bait.

There is a long history of sealing in the Chatham Islands. The Moriori had a custom of waiting until the seals were asleep on the rocks and would kill only the animals that they needed before leaving the colony still asleep on the beach. If there was any blood on the rocks they would be careful to scrub it clean or else the colony would be able to detect it and would leave that site.

As was often the case though, once sealers from the rest of the world arrived, huge numbers of seals were killed in a really short time and it has taken 150 years for their numbers to start to recover. NZ fur seals spend much of their time at sea and even today are easily caught in fishing nets by mistake. I decided that this seal’s need for fish is greater than mine so I pack up and head back to the food store at the hut to see what I can forage in there for supper.

What's happening to the tomtits? December 11th

2010-01-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

I spent some time up on Stacey’s track today checking nests. The eggs at KD18, a black robin nest, still haven’t hatched after 19 days. The average time from egg laying to hatching in black robins is 18 days, so these guys are running a little late. But the mother is still sitting on them, and doesn’t move even when I tap on the fallen tree trunk in which she nests.

Female tomtit:

On my way back I was doing a bit of nest searching along Stacey’s and Chiquitas Track and a little Chatham Island Tomtit hopped past. It was a boy (you can tell as he has black feathers on his back whereas the females have brown). When he got the worm I fed him he was delighted! He started a song which can only be translated into English as “Hey! I’ve got a worm. Me. Over here. I’VE GOT A WORM.” This allows the female tomtits to hear and come over and see him as a potential mate as he is a good provider of fresh worms. But there are very few female tomtits on the Island this year. We’ve found only 13 tomtit nests so far. And even worse, none of the fledglings that Melanie banded last year have been re-sighted this year, compared to half of the robins banded last year.

Male tomtit:

I stayed on the track for about 15 minutes, feeding other birds and looking for other nests, and the entire time I kept hearing the same tomtit song; “I’ve got a worm. I’VE GOT A WORM.” It broke my heart. When I got home there was even worse news. Fast Eddie, the tomtit who lives around the hut lost all his three chicks that hatched only yesterday! We don’t know who took them, but the nest is empty. All that effort in reproducing has come to nothing. We’re very fond of Eddie and fed him extra worms yesterday evening to pass on to his mate who needs to get her strength up to try to lay more eggs before the end of the breeding season. Eddie is a comfort eater like me and he ate several worms before fitting four worms into his beak to bring to his mate. As Brigitta says “Our sympathy is with the family,” and it is; both with Eddie and his mate and the whole Rangatira tomtit population!

Rock platforms, lichens, plants and Andre Agassi - December 10

2010-01-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

It’s Friday and even though we don’t get the weekend off, I’m feeling frivolous. So this afternoon I went to Whalers Bay which is fast becoming my favourite place on the Island. It has the most amazing rocky platforms on which almost nothing grows. As we’ve had such a run of gentle weather it is hard to imagine it, but when the sea gets rough this is part of the intertidal spray zone and it is too salty and too disturbed for any soil to build up and the forest plants to grow. Instead it is home to a massive array of lichens, which aren’t actually plants but are a “joint venture” between a fungus, which provides the structure, and either an alga or a cyanobacterium which does the photosynthesis and provides the nutrients. This type of joint venture, where both of the partners get a benefit from the arrangement is called a symbiosis.

Anyway, lichens come in a huge range of colours and sizes, as you can see. There were also some bigger plants round here which seem to be able to survive in cracks in the rocks.

While I was taking photos of lichens, the NZ shore plovers were patrolling the area, squeaking at me. With their white headband of feathers we refer to them as Andre Agassis, as they look like they are ready to play a tennis match. They used to live all around the NZ shores but due to introduced mammals they are ONLY found here on Rangatira and a few are found on the Western Reef. These wee birds are even more endangered than the black robins now. I would just love for the rest of NZ to be able to see these chaps as they are so earnest and endearing.

Shoreplover

Going on holiday - December 9th

2009-12-23T22:44:00.000-08:00

Due to the christmas holidays this blog will be taking a break and will resume on January 11th.

Happy Holidays!

What I did on my holiday - December 9th

2009-12-23T22:43:00.000-08:00

Today it was my turn for a morning off. What to do on my morning off? There is an entire island to explore with beaches, two summits (the North and South Summit), and lots of bush containing friendly birds? I lay in bed for a moment mulling over the endless possibilities. Please don’t be disappointed in me when I tell you that the big highlight of my morning off was finally taking a shower and doing some laundry.

The shower:

We’re limited to a shower a week here (yes, we do wash between showers) to make sure that we don’t run out of water. First we heat up a big pot of water on the stove until it boils, then pour it into one of our big 20 litre buckets and top it up with cold water. Back in the shower shed you put the hose from the shower deep into the bucket, hop into the shower and start dancing on the pumps. It’s not a smooth flow of water, more a series of squirts, but after no showers for a week it is heaven.

I then heated up more water to wash my clothes, in yet another set of buckets. These are the buckets into which we packed all of our gear back at DoC base on the main Chatham Island. The buckets have a million and one uses on Rangatira with shower and washing machine being the least of them. We also store our clothes in these buckets and stand on them to look into nests that we’re just not quite tall enough to see into etc.

Recycling on the island

While hand-washing my clothes on the deck of the hut, I noticed a couple of Chatham Island skinks sun-bathing. Skinks are poikilothermic, which is what we used to call “cold blooded” and they need to bask in the sun to warm themselves up enough to allow them to go off foraging for the day. These are the only lizard species found on the Chatham Islands and have only survived in areas without introduced mammalian predators.

A skink enjoying the sunshine:

With my work done I followed the skinks example and spent the rest of the morning basking in the sun, reading. Bliss.

On poos and wees - December 8th

2009-12-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

Although we have a toilet here on Rangatira, it is a composting toilet which is reserved for poos rather than wees. So when we need to wee, we find an appropriate bush to skulk behind. Thankfully there are a lot of bushes in the forest so we don’t have far to look. It’s a bit spooky going at night though as I always forget my torch and there is a loud rustling from insects and the screeching of sea birds who rush away as soon as they see me. I know that Rangatira is very safe, but I still rush back to my warm sleeping bag as fast as I can every night.

The toilet!

Whenever we weigh or catch birds in our mist nets, Melanie is always pleased when the birds voluntarily donate a poo sample, even if it’s on our pants. With great joy the poo sample is scooped up and placed inside a small Eppendorf vial. Why is Melanie so excited about poo? She, Brigitta and an expert virologist named Arvind Varsani at the University of Canterbury are collaborating on a study on viruses. Animals shed viruses in their poo, and Melanie, Brigitta and Arvind hope to find out whether black robins or any other birds on this island are infected with viruses.

Egg shells and other material collected for further research:

And while we are on the subject of all things excretory, most birds are very careful not to poo in their nests. Baby birds shuffle themselves to the edges of their nests and poo on the rim. Their poo in contained in a thin membrane and the parent will either eat it or fly away with it and drop it far from the nest. How’s that for tidy?

Update on families and friends - December 7th

2009-12-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

It is as though we have families on the island, even if it’s just our favourite birds and their young. There I love working out names for the young just as they are about to fledge. There is one black robin whose offspring are always named after islands. I was keen for Stewart and South, but got out voted and we decided on Whenua Hou (also called Codfish Island where the Kakapo live) and Ulva, another great bird island in Paterson Inlet, off Stewart Island. Another bird’s offspring are named after Norse Gods. We decided on Freya and Loki for her two chicks. If the nest I found today (that makes two nests now) has chicks, I’m hoping to name one after my niece Aroha.

A black robin chick:

I know that Alex has introduced you to some of our favourite birds, so I thought I should update you on their progress:

Fast Eddie and his mate, the tomtit pair who live around the west side of the hut have eggs, which should be hatching any day now. Fat Freddie and his girl, who live further up Summit track past the toilet also have eggs, but we don’t know when they were laid so are not sure of their hatching date. We’ll keep checking the nest of course and hope to hear the chirp of tiny birds in the near future.

Drusilla, the female tomtit in Ikes Bush, has three chicks that look like they have just had posh highlights put in and are about to fledge.

Drusilla's three chicks:

We went to check on Liddy and her chicks yesterday, to weigh and band them. To our distress all of her gorgeous chicks have died. Two of her chicks must have died a few days ago and she removed them from the nest. Liddy was brooding one dead chick that must have died just a few hours ago when we visited the nest. It was very quiet in the hut for a few hours after this finding as we were all very sad about it. When there are only 160 black robins in the world, losing three nestlings at once is a huge blow to the future of the black robins.

Black robin chick:

On a lighter note:

“Sophie, you know AB18?” asked Melanie.

“Which one is that?”

“The one up the tree.”

Brigitta laughed so much her tea nearly came out of her nose.

The morning report and Lorna on the Pyramid - December 6th

2009-12-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

The Pyramid:

You will have worked out by now that we are quite remote here on Rangatira but we don’t feel alone. Occasionally fishing boats get so close that we can hear their radios and a plane came over yesterday too. We’ve got a radio in the hut tuned in on the fisherman's channel and we can pick up anything said across the airwaves at any time of the day. The important communications start just as we’re getting set up for the day at about 7.45am when the teams on the other satellite Chatham Islands call in to DoC at their scheduled times, or “Scheds.” The person calling starts with “DOC base, DOC base, DOC base, this is The Forty Fours. Do you copy?” And DOC base of course does copy. They have a quick chat about work, water and food supplies and how the radio battery is always running down, before leaving the airwaves clear for the team on the Pyramid to take over.

Living on the Pyramid:

Lorna with a friend:

I especially love hearing what is happening on the Pyramid (also known as Tarakoekoea) because you can hear the albatross screeching in the background. Lorna, who is a PhD student at University of Canterbury, and her field assistant Dan are the official “tough cookies” of the satellite Chatham Islands, living on a rock which juts out of the sea just like a pyramid! The only flat area on the Pyramid provides just enough space to set up two tents. Lorna and Dan not only brought their food for their stay, but also had to bring all of their fresh water. Our little hut on Rangatira and its water collecting system is the Ritz in comparison!

Chatham Island mollymawk and her chick:

At 8am it’s our turn. Mel tells Abi at Doc that we’re all still alive and that the work is going well and checks to see if there are any messages for us. Mostly there is nothing, and Abi tells us to keep safe and both of them agree to talk at 8 am the next morning.

“South East Listening” is how we say goodbye, letting the world know that we have the radio on in the hut.

We get the marine weather forecast from the radio too. For fishermen of course this information is crucial, but so it is for us as well. If it’s raining when we wake up, then it isn’t a filming day as cameras tend not to work in the pouring rain. And as we spend the whole day outside it is useful to know how much rain gear we should put in out backpacks.

Muehlenbeckia madness - December 5th

2009-12-18T23:23:00.000-08:00

One of the nests that Melanie sent me to check this morning was MM22 up on Jill’s track which had a chick that is about to fledge. The nest card for this one says that it is in Muehlenbeckia. Talk about an understatement!

Muehlenbeckia (also called pohuehue) is a native vine that looks like it is swallowing areas of the forest, eventually pulling down the trees that it covers. Around nest MM22 there is a clearing that is covered in the stuff.

Muehlenbeckia in the forest:

Imagine if you can, me, having tripped over at least three times, swearing at the poor plant and getting my pocket knife out hack it into submission. The large areas of it are signs of a disturbed forest, which is hardly surprising seeing that the Rangatira forest is still re-growing after having been grazed for years.

Thick growth of Muehlenbeckia:

The thick tangled Muehlenbeckia vines along with the thicker supplejack vines however provide the perfect support for a nest. Both the new and old dying vines are full off nests, as they are sheltered from the wind and rain and strong enough to carry Tarzan were he to swing by.

I spent an hour looking for a Chatham Island Tomtit nest this morning. Every time I fed the male, he flew towards a patch of old Muehlenbeckia vines. But try as I might, and I really did try, I just couldn’t find where the nest actually was.

Just before I decided to give up and find a handy stump on which to sit down and have a cry, Mel came along. I pointed out the right area and it too her fewer than 5 minutes to find the nest, and it had three tiny white eggs in it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you SF01, my first nest!

Nest in Muehlenbeckia:

Introducing Old Blue - December 4th

2009-12-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

When I told people that I was coming out here to work on Black Robins, most of them, including the lady that I brought some underwear from at Farmers in Dunedin, said “Oh I know all about Old Blue.” Old Blue was the most famous Black Robin and all the Black Robins who are alive today are related to her.

Plaque to commerate Old Blue:

She was relocated along with 6 other robins from Little Mangere to Mangere Island in September 1976 in a project spearheaded by Don Merton. The Black Robins were seriously endangered on Little Mangere and needed a safe haven in which to breed. They were moved to Mangere Island and work started in fostering chicks to tomtits, both on Mangere and Rangatira. Old Blue herself was finally released on to Rangatira in November 1983, followed by a film crew, which is one of the reasons that she is so well known.

Bands on a black robin:

Old Blue got her name from the banding pattern on her legs; many of the Black Robins here on Rangatira are banded. This allows researchers to identify the birds individually and follow them and their families through the years. Old Blue was banded with a metal band on her right leg with B11384 on it and she had two plastic coloured bands on her left; a red one on the top and a blue one on the bottom. Somehow she lost the red one and after that was called Granny Blue or Old Blue.

Walking home yesterday evening down Summit Track, I was delighted to pass a small sign pointing out the spot where Old Blue had been released. For a moment I felt like I do when passing a house in which someone famous once lived; that I was in the presence of history, in this case conservation history. Then my stomach rumbled so I hurried on in search of supper.

Tag showing where Old Blue was released onto Rangatira Island:

PS Brigitta found her first nest! Annika and I, who have yet to find any, are terribly jealous and will be hunting madly tomorrow.

A beginner's guide to checking nests - December 3rd

2009-12-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

After a short course in nest checking 101 yesterday afternoon, Melanie sent us off with our list of nests to check first thing this morning. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of what and where the nests are on the island and she was riffling through her packet of nest cards, dealing ones close together out to each of us while we were still finishing our breakfast coffee.

I went off into the bush, first to find 09RAN – KD24, a black robin nest, who I was told would be on East Cut between South Cross and Stacey’s. Tracks here are labeled in day-glow orange flagging tape and I’d love to say that you can’t get lost; I can, but am supremely gifted in that direction!

Occasionally you come across a pink tag, and that tells you that there is a nest nearby. You then follow the pink tags deep into the bush until you get to one with a compass bearing and some instructions as to how to find the nest from there. KD24 is nice and obvious, low down in the roots of a dead Chatham Island akeake tree. Sounding as quiet as an average baby elephant in my petrel boards, I plodded over to the rotting stump and inside, just as the nest card promised, was a nest with two small eggs in it. These were first found on November 27th so are likely to be hatching in about 10 days.

Not all nests are this easy to spot or get to. Some are too high to be able to see into. So, then we use a small mirror on a collapsible sticks to look inside the nest. Others are in very high trees and we need to watch the parent’s behaviour to see if the female is incubating or if both the parents are feeding chicks. All in all, it’s like doing a treasure hunt and the clues will get you to the treasure of a warm nest with eggs which soon will hatch into seriously fluffy chicks!

Changing of the Guard - December 2nd

2009-12-15T11:54:00.000-08:00

Hello. My name is Sophie Fern and I’m the new Alex. I hopped off the boat onto Rangatira Island this morning with my fellow adventurers Brigitta Kurenbach and Annika Wagenhoff at about 7 am, which seemed quite late to us as we got up just before 4 am this morning. On Rangatira we were met by Keven, Ali, Alex and Melanie, who caught us as we leapt onto the rocks. We then had a tiny minute to pass buckets between the boat and the rocks before saying goodbye to everyone except Mel and getting ourselves settled into the hut. Let me introduce us:

Annika:

Annika Wagenhoff spends her life in gumboots, and although she says she has a life away from them too, we’ve promised not to tell her supervisor. She’s doing her PhD in stream ecology at Otago University looking at macroinvertebrates (i.e. big critters without backbones). When not in gumboots Annika changes into her high heels for salsa, bare feet for African Dance and sneakers for hip hop dance. She has recently started surfing but didn’t bring her board with her as the sea here is far too rough even to swim here.

Brigitta:

Brigitta Kurenbach is a Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Canterbury studying bacterial genetics. She thinks that the chicks, which weigh grams and are measured in millimeters, are huge! In her spare time she is also a dancer. She tap-dances and goes tramping whenever she can, which isn’t often enough. And she has never done any field work before. She shares an office with Mel at the University, and now of course shares a hut with her too.

Sophie:

And I have quite a few jobs right now, but mostly work in public education at the NZ Marine Studies Centre also at Otago University and spend the rest of my time writing. When not working I’m often found wandering the Otago Peninsula with Zena, my yellow Labrador, or tucked up somewhere with a good book, cup of tea and a piece of cake. I’ve always wanted to live on an Island and just jumped at the chance to be here.

Good-bye Alex, Hello Sophie - December 2nd

2009-12-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

Sunset on West Landing:

The sound of engines early in the morning is not as unusual as you might expect here on Rangatira. Normally it is just the locals collecting crays from their pots but today they have come to collect us! Keven, Alison and I will be taking the boat back to Chatham island and then the plane to New Zealand. But the “Acheron” has brought Sophie, Brigitta and Annika to join Mel and take over as robin-hunters, tomtit-watchers, chick-weighers, skua-dodgers and prion-rescuers.. I mean, as Melanie’s field assistants. They will be watching over our friends – and Sophie will be writing to you about it, so keep her posted if you have more questions about Tawhiti and Asha, Lupe and Mathias, Liddy and her whanau or any of the spiders, snipe, seabirds and seals on the island! And right now I have to go and bid a tearful farewell to Eddie the tomtit…

The prion rescue society - November 28th

2009-12-14T11:40:00.000-08:00

Now, I have told you a lot about the bird population of Rangatira but the human population has some unusual characteristics too – one of these is their habit of falling out of trees. Maybe it doesn’t sound strange but think about it: when was the last time you saw a fully-grown person falling out of a tree? The next question is probably: why does this happen on NZ’s offshore islands? Well, blame the prions.

Broad-billed prion on the forest floor:

Almost a million broad-billed prions come to breed on Rangatira island each year. They fly in from the sea at dusk, crashing head first through the canopy, hurrying to feed their chicks a tasty meal of regurgitated krill. Unfortunately some of them don’t reach the ground. Their wings, so perfectly adapted to acrobatics in southern storms, do not function without a breeze. As soon as they reach the still air of the bush, they are helpless as babies. They cannot flap their wings and hover. They cannot move backwards.

Often, in the morning, we find these birds caught by their necks in a v-shaped branch, or with one foot trapped in a twist of vine or even halfway out of their burrows with a tree-root wrapped around one wing. Sometimes they are too badly injured to survive. But sometimes, even if it requires climbing a very spindley mahoe tree with a pair of secateurs between our teeth, sometimes, we can save them.

The latest news on the robin clan - November 28th

2009-12-14T11:39:00.000-08:00

Liddy is the proud mother of three tiny chicks. Now the race is on for her and her young partner to collect enough food for the whole family. They will be so busy. Melanie and I visited the newborns this morning to weigh them (they are just over two grams) and to congratulate Liddy too – her chicks are gorgeous but very tiny!! It is hard to believe that in three weeks time they will be big feathery fledglings.

Liddy's three chicks:

Tawhiti’s chicks now have names - the whole family is named after island reserves. Tawhiti and his brother, Rekohu, were named after the largest island of the Poor Knights Islands (Tawhiti) and the Chatham Island (Rekohu). Tiritiri and Matangi have been named after the island in the Hauraki Gulf.

(This blog was written by Melanie and Alex)

Weighing black robins - November 27th

2009-12-13T16:45:00.000-08:00

The adult robins are very patient with us. Lello (named after Melanie’s brother, Raffaello) and Christmas girl (she has dark green and red bands) live in a glut of vines and matipo on West Landing. They are super friendly and very trusting. Nevertheless, they like to watch us when we weigh their babies just to make sure we are gentle. Not that we can really call their chicks babies anymore – they are so big now! Here you can see one of Lello’s chicks at 3 days old, at pin-break (when their feathers just start to show) and at banding age (16 days old); going from 4 grams to nearly 27 grams in just 12 days.

Lello's chick showing her bands - 16 days old:

Why do we collect this growth data? It is an important part of Melanie’s research to compare the growth rate of Rangatira songbird chicks to the growth rate of songbird chicks on mainland NZ. The speed at which the chicks grow up and shift out of the nest depends on the safety of their environment. Mammalian predators, such as rats, cats and stoats really like baby birds for breakfast, lunch and dinner! The more hungry predators there are, the more dangerous it is for chicks to spend a long time in the nest. Every day they spend in the nest increases the chance that they will be discovered and eaten by a predator.

Lello's chick at weighing time - at pinbreak stage:

So, if there are lots of hungry predators lurking around in the forest, it is a much safer strategy for chicks to grow very fast and lave the nest as early as possible! European songbirds, like blackbirds and starlings, have evolved in Europe alongside predators for a very long time (we are talking about millions of years here!) have developed this strategy: grow fast and get out of the nest! For example, a blackbird chick on mainland New Zealand will leave its nest after only 14 days, while a black robin chick on Rangatira Island will typically stay in its nest for 22 days! What do you think is the better strategy if there are lots or predators out and about?

Lello's chick at 3 days old:

(This blog was written by Melanie and Alex)

Enter the tomtit - November 26th

2009-12-11T22:06:00.000-08:00

The tomtit death-stare

Way, way out on the west coast, in a little patch of forest called Ikes Bush, lives Drusilla the Bold (aka kung-fu tomtit). She is Fierce with a capital F! If we go anywhere near her nest she welcomes us with the tomtit death-stare. To her dismay, we weigh her chicks every three days. She does not like it one bit and she breaks out her fighting moves. She puffs herself up (almost to the size of an orange). She squeaks with rage. She flew at Ali’s eyes, slapped Kev with her wings and even sat on Mel’s hand and pecked it repeatedly. And she won’t be placated with worms; she spurns our offerings with her beak in the air. But I’m proud of her! So brave for a tiny bird!

Tomtit kung-fu

Emma and Blue Mansion in the vines - November 25th

2009-12-10T22:03:00.000-08:00

Emma - the black robin

I know I have mentioned Emma and Blue’s nest to you. She has built in exactly the same spot three years in a row, just adding a bit of new straw to the old nest, tucking in extra moss, a few softer feathers. She gives the nest an extension and a thorough renovation each spring. As you can imagine, her nest is now much bigger than a normal robin nest. This season Emma and Blue have raised one chick.

Emma and Blue's nest

Blue is part of Rangatira royalty, as one of the oldest robins on the island (he is really known as Mr. Blue). He is a venerable boy of at least nine years old – his blue bands were put on in the year 2000.

Mr Blue - the black robin

Spirit of Enderby

2009-12-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

The Spirit of Enderby

And just when we were all starting to go a bit crazy from the isolation (you know, trying to talk bird language, making friends with prion chicks, that kind of thing), help arrived! A whole ship full of fellow bird-lovers anchored off Three Amigos Point, bringing civilisation and hot water!!! And we didn’t have to light fires (we can’t here, it’s a reserve) and wave flags from the beach to get their attention. Rodney Russ from the Spirit of Enderby called Melanie on the radio (I told you they were civilised). Rodney picked us up in his small boat (we had to leap from the rocks), showered and fed us and let us sleep the night in the warmth of the ship.

Pacific mollymawk

The best thing? (apart from the tiramisu and the lovely company, that is) The Pacific mollymawks! These beautiful birds were gliding all around the ship. They are a small albatross with a wingspan of around five or six feet (1.5 - 2 metres). They don’t come near our island usually, but they like to follow boats, especially when sailors are catching cod on the back deck. (Thanks again, Rodney and crew, for the hospitality, hot water and the bananas!)

News from Tawhiti and Asha, and Lupe and Mathias - November 23rd

2009-12-06T11:36:00.000-08:00

Tawhiti with a mealworm:

Tawhiti’s chicks are all grown up – so quickly! Two have been banded and we expect them to fledge any day now. They will be among the first chicks on the island to leave their nest; the first to go from nestlings to fledglings. The third chick didn’t survive. It must have been too hard for Tawhiti and Asha to find enough food for all three chicks so one fell behind. But they have raised two healthy robins and that is pretty good going.

Tawhiti's chick:

Lupé and Mathias have two eggs now and Lupé is sitting tight – although when I watched her yesterday she would leave every ten minutes to find a few more feathers just to make incubating a bit more comfy. And Liddy, Lupé’s mother, should have chicks any day now. She has been sitting for 18 days and no longer comes off the nest when we visit her. She knows her chicks will be hatching any moment - in fact, she can probably hear them tapping away inside the shell.

Lupe on her nest:

Crazy Big Spiders - November 22nd

2009-12-03T15:05:00.000-08:00

A Rangatira spider lives on our front porch and sometimes in my rain trousers – what a nasty surprise that was! He popped out the bottom of my trousers when I put my foot in the top. I just shrugged… Ha! Okay, I screamed! (don’t tell anyone) But Alison has hungry caterpillars living in her clothes, and they have eaten holes in her sleeves. So maybe spiders are better.

Male Rangatira spider with 20 cent coin beside him:

Our porch spider is a male, so he is mainly black with brown patches (that is a twenty cent coin beside him) - really different to the female who lives in the fuel shed. She is much bigger, browner and hairier and thankfully doesn’t live in my rain gear.

Egg sacs on a forest tree:

There must be thousands of these giant spiders strolling the island by night. Almost every dead tree has egg sacs hanging from it, and each must have hundreds of eggs inside (no, I’m not going to break one open to see. What if the spiders want revenge?) I couldn’t find Big Mama spider last night (she is very shy), but I found her legs. Well, leg cases at least, left behind after she moulted. Spiders shed their skin when they grow so that means she must be even bigger now…… (cue sinister cello music..)

Spider moult!

Where is my nest? - November 21st

2009-12-02T15:46:00.000-08:00

A male black robin defending his territory:

Black robins are very territorial birds. The male bird has a patch of forest which he defends against other robins, even during the winter. If you ever get to a place where you can see four robins at once, you know you are on a boundary between territories - and you won't miss it, because the birds fight like cats and dogs. The two boys will puff themselves up so they look bigger and meaner, snapping their beaks and spreading their wings. Then the chase is on: in and out of vines and around trees, zig-zagging through the bush. Suddenly the robins cross a line in the leaf litter that we can't see. The scrap is over.....for now at least.

A female black robin sitting on her nest:

Inside the territory, the female robin will build her nest. If she works at it, she can be done in just a few days. All robin nests look alike - cups of moss and straw stuck together with spider webs and finished off with a layer of white seabird feathers - but the birds never get confused, not after all that work! Sometimes if last year's nest was really nice, the robin will build her new nest on top of it. Emma and Blue have used the same nest spot three years running so their nest is getting really tall. Another pair of robins have build their nest inside an old black bird nest - very resourceful!

Young black robin chicks in their nest:

Banding tomtit chicks - November 20th

2009-12-01T11:48:00.000-08:00

Up on the west coast of Rangatira, Mel has found a new tomtit nest with three large chicks. They are too big already to be weighed as part of the growth data we are collecting, but before they are quite ready to lave the nest, Mel bands them.

Mel holding tomtit chick

Tomtit numbers are falling on Rangatira. If we band all the tomtits that we find this summer, then next summer DOC will be able to count them. This will tell DOC scientists how that species is doing, and help keep tabs on which birds have survived the winter and where they have moved to on the island.

Banding a tomtit chick

The chicks Olearia, Hebe and Senecio already have fully formed legs. Although their parents still feed them after they leave the nest, they will spend a lot of time hopping around, trying out their wings and learning to fly.

Penguin chick

They aren't the only big chicks Mel found either - check out these guys. Big, fat, fluffy blue penguins from a burrow in Ike's bush. Recently though, the local skuas have been coming into the forest and killing prion chicks - they would certainly not turn down a penguin. We build an entire Egyptian pyramid over this penguin nest. No skuas are going to get these ones.

Fast Eddie meets Fat Freddie - lining up the hut boys - November 19th

2009-11-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

Fast Eddie, the tomtit, is looking a little ruffled recently. Instead of just one hut tomtit begging daily for worms, now we have two! Who is the competition? Fat Freddie, a male tomtit from the south side. Eddie and Freddie are having a bit of a tussle over the territory.

Let's face it, this is a great place for a tomtit to live. There is a never-ending supply of mealworms to score with minimal effort. All you need to do is fly a lap of the hut, make sure that one of those humans spot you through the window, and look cute and hungry - and if that is not enought to get their attention, throw in a pathetic chirp or two. Eddie is good at this, especially if the weather is bad. We will be washing the dishes, and he will come cheeping at the kitchen window with his feathers stuck down from the rain, looking all bedraggled and forlorn. Eddie is particularly keen on worms right now - his girl is sitting on four eggs down in the trees on the north side of the hut.

Fast Eddie and Fat Eddie look identical to us humans. So how do we tell them apart? Take a close look at their ankles. Eddie has a red band and a blue band on his right leg, Freddie has two red bands.

Warbler chick growing fast - November 18th

2009-11-29T11:42:00.000-08:00

Remember that squirmy, white-tufted little chick from a week or so ago? Well, look at him now! He still has big, white, fluffy eyebrows but he has grown “pins” - thin, grey tubes with feathers inside. At about ten days old, the feathers will begin to break through the end of each pin until, by 21 days old, he will look like a real warbler (instead of like an old professor napping in the library) – just a bit fatter and fluffier.

A warbler chick - growing up fast!

He’ll leave the nest but his parents will keep feeding him for a while, just like these fledglings I found on the track to Whalers Bay.

Parent with their fledgings:

Free days at the beach - November 17th

2009-11-27T19:46:00.000-08:00

Weeks have a different shape on Rangatira. It is hard to remember what day it is anyway, but instead of five days and then a weekend, we have three days work then a morning off. What do you do with spare time on a tiny island? Well, most of the robin work is in the bush near the hut.

View of Thinornis Bay

So usually on our morning off we try to get to the more isolated parts of the coast. I like Thinornis Bay best: it is pretty, there is a seal colony and you can walk the whole way there around the rocks without once having to put on your petrel boards.

Seal at Thinornis Bay:

I am among the seals before I see them. It is a beautiful day and they are curled up asleep in the sun, perfectly blended into the rocks. Suddenly they smell me! (I haven’t done laundry in a while, yikes!) Their heads pop up, their big moustaches quiver, some of them bark and I quickly climb up out of their way. Further round a giant petrel is making long, lazy, gliding circles above the breakers (wingspan of over two metres!!) There are scarlet anemones in the rock pools, half closed up from the low tide.

Scarlet anemone in the rock pool:

Chatham island oyster catchers catnap on their feet, their red beaks tucked into their feathers. They are really rare, with only 142 birds left when they were last counted, and only eight on Rangatira.

Chatham Islands Oyster Catcher:

Gone Fishing.......November 16th

2009-11-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

Now, where were we with our shipwreck story? Ahh yes, we had eaten paua and were getting on to the next course: fish. I have seen Bear Grylls (Man vs Wild?) use his trousers as a fishing-net while suspended from a tree in the jungle, but thankfully on Rangatira we have a fishing rod and some handlines!

Kev, Ali and I head out to the edge of the rock landing and suddenly the weather turns it on, with the heaviest downpour since we arrived. But the fishing is so good! With limpets as bait, it is only a few minutes before we have a bite and the first fish I have ever caught comes curling and twisting out of the water: a blue-purple rock cod gasping for breath.

The rain gets heavier, the drops driven into the waves so hard it makes the sea steam. Cold water works its way into the necks of our coats and runs down sleeves – my woolly hat is sopping wet, my nose is dripping and I am chilled to the bone. Two more cod (and a wrasse that we threw back) and we run for it, past the penguins sheltering under the rocks, back to the hut to warm up.

Lupé and Mathias build a nest - November 15th

2009-11-25T12:52:00.000-08:00

Some people always leave things to the last minute – and that goes for Mathias and Lupé as well, a pair of one year-old black robins. They are still nest-building when others like Tawhiti and Asha already have growing chicks.

Mathias the black robin:

Lupé comes from quite a distinguished family though. She is the daughter of Misty (otherwise known as Grumpy) who was the oldest black robin on the island last season. For 14 years, he lived just below the hut and liked to sit up at night singing to DOC rangers and scientists alike. Which might explain why he was a grumpy old robin, it sounds like he never slept. Lupé’s mother, Liddy was five years old when she had Lupé, and had to raise the girl pretty much alone as Grumpy would eat most of the worms himself. (Grumpy died during the winter and this season Liddy has taken up with a younger robin and is looking much healthier and better fed!) Lupé has moved to the other side of the hut with Mathias and has just finished lining her nest with white feathers. But we are still waiting for eggs.

Lupé and Mathias's nest:

Cheeky Kakariki! - November 14th

2009-11-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

Shy is not a word normally applied to Kakariki, the red-crowned parakeet. Noisy? Yes, you can hear them screeching and cackling in the tree-tops from miles away.

A "shy" Kakariki

Messy? Definitely – they leave the remains of their leaf picnics in piles on the forest floor (it’s quite cool, they hold a leaf in one claw and then suck it all around the edge.)

A leaf after a Kakariki has eaten it:

Close up of a Kakariki feather

But shy? Well, they are camera shy at least. And they seem to know when you have a camera too. I have sat outside with a cup of coffee and had a kakariki pair land on the deck nearby, tilting their heads to look at me before sidling around the corner of the hut. But when you want to photograph them they keep under cover. It isn’t hard to follow their movements through the vines - one clump of leaves shakes, then another as they climb about just behind the canopy. I’m sure they know that my lens is trained on them like a cop in a stake-out… one of these days Kakariki, one of these days!

Kakariki "hanging out"

A walk in the dark........November 13th

2009-11-23T13:27:00.000-08:00

We usually finish for the day around 6pm – there is so much work on the island, and thirteen weeks is not long time to do it all. Even so, after dinner I like to go back into the forest to see who is around, all of us do. It is very dark under the trees despite a full yellow moon, but quiet? No way! The sooty shearwaters yowl like cats, the storm petrels sound like yapping lapdogs and the penguins wheeze like ancient, emphysemic donkeys.

When I approach, the sooties look up at me, slightly concerned but not scared, and not interested either – which is a pity, I’d love to have a conversation with one. The sooty shearwater, aka muttonbird or titi, is an amazing bird – it travels all the way up to the Arctic circle for the European summer and then back to little old Rangatira to breed, returning to the same nest each year. Under the supplejack, a blue penguin peers out, a little curious but he too shuffles off into the dark.

The white-faced storm petrels are small enough to fit in your hand without sticking out too much on either side, perhaps 15 centimetres from beak to tail. They have ridiculously long legs for walking about a forest, but out at sea their long limbs are invaluable. The petrels hover just over the water, slapping and splashing their feet on the surface. Mel says they look like ballroom dancers with their wings outstretched and their feet tapping on the water - but much more lethal: the dance attracts their prey. And when small fish and krill come close, the petrels dive in and snap them up.

The other thing common to the storm petrels is their attraction to lights, quite dangerous if you are wearing a headlamp as they lurch out of the dark straight for your head – lucky they are so small!

The Paua Hunters - November 13th

2009-11-22T11:46:00.000-08:00

Imagine being shipwrecked on Rangatira Island. First, the moment when the breeze dies and silence falls, leaving your boat rolling on a dark and oily sea. The sails hang slack, then snap out tight, first in one direction then another as the wind begins to gust, whipping the wave tops to white foam and flinging it against a sky that is the purple-black colour of a bruise. Now hold on! Your boat is driven before the storm days on end, until with a crash, you land on an unknown shore: battered but alive and very hungry. As you step into the bush, robins and tomtits hop up to you… unfortunately you are an avid ornithologist and refuse to eat birds, not even the seabirds beneath your feet! So what will you eat?

Looking for paua in the rockpools

Well, we might not be shipwrecked but it is still fun to try and live off the land. And Mel, who has spent three summers on Rangatira, shows me the ropes. On an afternoon too rainy to band birds, we head around the coast, searching pool after pool for the biggest paua we can see. They are not easy to spot, as their shells are encrusted the same pink colour as the rocks, but when they are grazing they raise their shells up and you can see the black body moving and munching its way around the pool.

Paua body and shell

You have to be quick though - if you don’t twist them off the rocks first time they suck on tight and you will never get them up. Fresh paua, sliced and cooked with butter and lemon (provided your lemon supplies survived the shipwreck) – luxury!

Paua in the rockpools

Getting lie of the land - November 12th

2009-11-21T12:36:00.000-08:00

If you look at a map of Rangatira, you will see that it is divided into two uneven halves. Skua Gully splits the island east to west – although it is not really a gully and is completely free of skuas. Most of the robin work takes place in the lower half of the island which is known as Woolshed Bush, but all that remains of the woolshed is a few posts and a stack of ancient sheep skulls. At a quick pace, you can cross Woolshed Bush in 15 minutes and climb up through the bracken and nettle that choke Skua gully into Top bush, the southern and much bigger half of the island. The trees are smaller up there and cling more precariously in thinner soil, more thoroughly mined with tunnels and nests.

Skua getting ready to attack

On the far side of Top bush are North and South summit - and it is here that I make my way one hot and sunny afternoon. Both summits are slabs of lichen-covered rock that drop sheer into the sea. It is not the sort of place to be careless of either your footing or the skuas. For twenty minutes, it is gorgeous there – hot, calm and with a clear view out to the Murumurus, a cluster of sharp rocks fallen from the end of Pitt island – but then I am discovered. How do these bird have the energy to be so angry?! They win though – I move downhill to find somewhere more peaceful.

Chatham Island forget-me-not

It was Kev who found Forget-me-not gully between the two summits, reachable by sliding over boulders and crawling under the giant hebes until, scratched and dusty, you come out into a meadow of Chatham island forget-me-nots. The cliffs of both peaks tower above and in the narrow slice of ocean you can just make out the distant Pyramid island – a much nicer place to hang out.

Alex enjoying the view

Happy birthday Tawhiti! - November 11th

2009-11-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

Now that you have meet the human team, I will introduce some of the black robins – they are the reason we are here, after all. Today, we begin with the birthday boy (we just looked him up in the register and he is two years old today!) Tawhiti is well-known to Melanie.

Tawhiti - isn't he cute!

He was born in the first summer that she spent with the robins, in 2007, the son of Cash (the only black-banded robin on the island who also lives on Rangatira’s east coast).

Cash the man in black!

Tawhiti has faced his share of tragedy. Last season, as a first year breeder, he and his girl Asha lost their eggs, one after the other. How? No one knows – although it is common for predators, such as tui or shining cuckoo to take only what they can carry from a nest then come back for more days later. This year, Tawhiti’s Mum died, leaving the robin in black all alone. But Tawhiti and Asha are still neighbours to his old Dad and they are making up for last season. They have built a new nest not far from where Tawhiti was born, about ten metres away in a twisted old akeake stump. And they already have mouths to feed – three little black-tufted chicks. A family of three means lots of work for the pair to collect enough food – most robins only have two – so we always throw them a few extra mealworms, just to help out. In fact, just this morning when I passed Tawhiti ducked into the nest to feed his babies, and flew out with a poo-sack – nice one, Dad!

Tawhiti's babies

Warbler chicks - November 10th

2009-11-19T11:47:00.000-08:00

We have our first chicks! They are not the first chicks on the island – we have been hearing really high-pitched warbler cheeping for weeks - but they are the first to come from eggs we have been watching. Tiny, pink, wriggly little things that seem to be all mouth.

It is hard to believe that they smashed their way out of an egg. They need to be weighed and measured every three days.

Ali has the smallest fingers so she climbs up to the nest and very gently pulls each chick out, passing them down to me to keep warm, still wrapped in nest feathers. Mel puts them one by one into a milk bottle cap on the scales… 2 grams! That’s only half a teaspoon of bird!

Raising the flag for the robins - November 10th

2009-11-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

Lots of people have worked to save the black robin from extinction over the last seventy years and the support just keeps coming. Earlier this year, schools around New Zealand were given the opportunity to design a flag to be flown here on Rangatira, paying tribute to this little bird’s struggle for survival. I would just like to say again Congratulations!!!! to Theo Fowler of Diamond Harbour School on Banks Peninsula, Christchurch for his winning flag design!!! Theo, to let you know, your flag was carried as precious cargo to the island. More information about Theo's design can be found on the University of Canterbury's Science Outreach website.

Checking the nests - November 9th

2009-11-18T11:51:00.000-08:00

Deep in the bush, we continue to visit the nests of warblers, tomtits and robins, usually every three days. Checking the nests is a bit like orienteering. You begin at the hut with the name of a track – say North Cross - and a code – AB02. As you walk along North Cross you will find pink tapes dangling from a tree branches with the codes on them. When you find your code, follow the trail of tapes into the trees until you reach one that has a compass bearing and a distance that pinpoints the nest location.

Chatham Island warbler nest

So far we have found lots of Chatham Island warbler nests which are tear-drop shaped, and woven onto high branches. A fair number of black robin nests have been found too, which are bigger and built lower down, often in holes in old Akeake trees. Both bird species use spider webs as glue to stick the twigs and straw and bark together when they are building, and both line their nests with white feathers that have been shed by the seabirds. There is also the odd blackbird nest floating about, easily distinguishable by its size, and the lack of feathers lining it – perhaps a bird used to warmer climes. The big blue-green eggs are a bit of a giveaway too.

Blackbird nest

One of the jobs that Mel does is a parasite count. If there are lots of fleas in a nest, a bird can get so uncomfortable that she will abandon it. How do you count such tiny creatures? Well, you have to wait until you are back in the lab. But you can catch them. We visit a robin nest in Merlin’s bush, on the east side of the island. Mel hands me the two tiny speckled eggs to keep warm in my palm. Wearing a latex glove, she puts her fingers into the nest for 60 seconds, hoping they will crawl onto her warm hand. She then pulls off the glove, trapping the parasites inside, ready to be counted back in Christchurch. To be on the safe side, Mel treats the nest with a bit of flea powder before we put the eggs safely back for the robin to incubate.

Chatham Island tomtit nest

Grouchy's new roof - November 8th

2009-11-17T11:43:00.000-08:00

I am on my way to check a Chatham Island tomtit nest on the south side of the island when I stumble across a big fat ball of fluff. He is huge – probably the chick of a broad-billed prion – and very stroppy when I stop to see if he is alright. His burrow has collapsed around him and he is sitting exposed to the elements. I’m not sure if he just got too big for the nest and brought the ceiling down himself but I brave his wrath and give him a new roof, just in case. I rebuild his burrow with a slab of wood and some sticks and finally he stops moaning and settles back to sleep.

Chick in need of a burrow:

Burrow all fixed:

The tomtit isn’t playing along either. Her nest has been found but we don’t know if she is incubating any eggs yet. I see her once and then nothing for the next hour. The male isn’t around either. In fact the forest is silent now that Grouchy the sooty chick has stopped grumbling and I have to leave empty-handed.

Male tomtit:

Meet more of the team - November 8th

2009-11-17T11:42:00.000-08:00

Keven Drew:

Over the last 30 years, Keven has worked with birds all over New Zealand - from White Island and Whale Island up in the Bay of Plenty to the ice fields of Cape Bird in Antarctica. He has worked with kiwis, grey-faced petrels, gannets, Adélie penguins, and now the native songbirds on Rangatira. He is a mine of information about seabirds, their habits and calls. “Seabirds are amazing in the way that they seem so frail and clumsy on land but you should see them out in a gale. In those huge, buffeting winds from Antarctica, in storms that we struggle with, they have no trouble at all.” Kev has a habit of spotting things the rest of us miss, like storm petrel nests built in tangles of grass and skink burrows in the moss… oh, and that really big Rangatira spider that lives in the fuel shed. Being an avid photographer seems to be a big part of being a bird lover, and if you can’t find Kev, he is most likely to be out snapping shots of the terns and the big swells on West Landing. He has two children – Michael and Jasmine – and is based in Christchurch when he isn’t doing fieldwork.

Renny:

And I can’t finish the team intros without mention of Renny, ace nest hunter, who left in the rain the day that I arrived. And also Abi and Briggs of Department of Conservation in the Chatham Islands who came over to Rangatira with me and stayed here just one week to open all the petrel burrows – and extra thanks to Abi for letting me tag along!

Abi and Briggs:

First light in the world - November 7th

2009-11-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

The seabirds have been up for hours, making their loud trumpet noises under the hut and when I go outside the ground is crawling with them. It is 5:30 am and I’m getting involved in Mel’s research well and truly this time. It is my turn to set up a camera to film a robin’s nest for the first six hours of the day and I need to be across the island by sunrise.

The seabirds are truly clumsy on the ground. Their fat bodies wobble from side to side and they stumble often, sticking out a wing every few steps to hold themselves upright. The interesting thing is that they cannot take off without wind, so every morning they must make this painfully slow exodus through the forest until they reach the shore, or at least a decent take-off tree that they can climb with beak and claw until they have a breeze to lift them into the air.
I take a short cut around the coast and as usual the skuas want to scratch my eyes out for venturing onto their turf. But this time of day, they are torn between chasing me and the rich hunting to be had as the slow, grounded birds emerge from the bush. In the end they leave a titi, or sooty shearwater, wounded and crumpled on the rocks to dive at my head before going back to finish their breakfast. The sooties don’t make it difficult for the skuas. They all come out at one spot, queuing up and taking off one by one. I can see them all peering forward from their spot in the line as if I am a bank teller and they are wondering what the hold up is.

Back in the forest, I locate the tripod that we set up yesterday and start to film the nest. It is nearly 6:30, the others will be getting up in the hut and the kettle will be boiling. It is definitely time for a good cup of tea! I wait just a little to watch the rest of the sunrise – so strange to think that this is the very first light of today anywhere in the whole world and I am the first one to see it!

Teamwork! - November 7th

2009-11-16T12:01:00.000-08:00

The team here is a close-knit one – it has to be when the entire world for us is this little island and the members of the black robin research team. Abi and Briggs went back to Chatham Island last week so now there are just four of us. We have almost no contact with the outside world, just a hello from the Department of Conservation each morning to make sure we are still alive and a one-way relationship with the weather forecast man on the radio – and he mainly sends gale warnings these days… sigh. You already know me but it is about time you met some of the team -

Melanie Massaro:

If Mel won lotto she would buy a seabird island to live on and work with birds whenever she wanted. Hailing originally from Germany, she has been in New Zealand for nearly ten years, completing a PhD at Otago University and now postdoctoral research at the University of Canterbury. Mel has studied Snares penguins on the Snares Islands, yellow-eyed penguins on the Otago peninsula, Adélie penguins in Antarctica, kittiwakes in Newfoundland and has tickled puffins on the Westman Islands in Iceland. Her interest in birds began before university though. After finishing school she spent her gap year working with a bird conservation group in Germany (‘Naturschutzbund Deutschland’). Northern Germany was a great place for Mel to beceome a ‘birder,’ with a wetland near by where migrating geese, cranes and songbirds would stop to feed like crazy before heading across the Baltic to Sweden for the spring and summer. However, bird research was still not her first career choice. “I was convinced that I wanted to be a marine biologist studying whales and dolphins. I even went to Canada for the whales, but one day a friend pointed out that I seemed much more fascinated by birds – and she was right. I never looked back.” These days Mel splits her time between the black robins here (she knows most of them by name) and Adélie penguins in the Antarctic – and she even swears that it is warmer in the Antarctic during summer than here on Rangatira in November! To learn more how you follow in Mel's footsteps and become a biologist visit the University of Canterbury's School of Biological Sciences website.

Alison Botha:

Alison is Rangatira’s resident tea addict (with a record of 10 cups in one day) and the master tree-climber, but she is going cold turkey at the moment (from the tea not the tree-climbing)! Ali comes from South Africa but she has lived in Christchurch for ten years and has studied at Canterbury and Victoria Universities. Since then she has volunteered seven months on Raoul Island, a nature reserve in the Kermadecs where she battled weeds in the jungle and camped out on a cliff to watch the humpback whales migrating south; spent a summer as a hut warden on Mt Angelus in Nelson Lakes National Park and worked at Coronet Peak skifield. Out here, as well as tracking down all the really high-pitched chicks that the rest of us can’t hear, Ali is the one that really communes with the skuas: “They are like the rulers of the island. They know they are boss.” In return, the big skuas pretty much leave her alone – well, perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but they do seem to dive bomb her a little bit less than the rest of us! She even has the photo to prove it: the stunning sunrise picture of Whaler’s Bay, with the skua staying put on the rocks at the start of this blog entry is by Alison). The photo of Alison is by Melanie Massaro.

If you have worms you have friends - November 6th

2009-11-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

Alison, Kev and Melanie have been hard at work for the last two weeks tracking the robins back to their nests. It is no simple task, it can take hours to find just one and so far they have found nearly thirty black robin nests. All of us carry a special robin nest hunting kit at all times, containing a map of the island with all the known nests marked on it, a compass, ruler, vivid, pink tape, notebook and a mirror like the one your dentist uses on an extendable pole. And the most important thing to have at your fingertips? Mealworms.

Petrel boards make all of us crash through the bush like elephants and the robins come to investigate, swinging from supplejack across the track or jumping from tree to tree, watching closely. They will cheep, just to make sure you know they are there – and woe betide you if you take too long handing out worms: robins may be cute but they have a way of stamping their feet and looking daggers!

There is a double advantage to having worms. Firstly, it attracts the robins to you, instead of having to stumble about the forest looking for them. Also, it is a good way to identify boys and girls. The birds have very definite roles. The females build the nest and incubate the eggs. The males bring dinner. If a robin picks up the mealworm that you throw and carries it about with excited little chirps, it is a male. If you are careful, you can follow him when he goes to feed his girl and she can lead you to her nest.

Dr Melanie Massaro is based at the University of Canterbury's School of Biological Sciences. Learn more about her research at http://www.biol.canterbury.ac.nz/people/massaro.shtml

The Black Robin Project - November 5th

2009-11-13T13:27:00.000-08:00

Rangatira Island is a great place to research some of New Zealand’s native songbirds – black robins, Chatham Island warblers and Chatham Island tomtits. The black robins are the best studied of this group. Once upon a time they were the rarest birds in the world, with a small population restricted to Little Mangere Island, a tiny rock not far from here.

In the early eighties, just before the last of the forest died on Little Mangere, the last remaining robins were moved to Mangere Island and then to Rangatira where their breeding could be managed. At one stage there were only five birds alive, and only one female who produced fertile eggs. Conservation workers used tomtits and warblers as foster parents so that more black robin eggs could be incubated and hatched in one season. They managed to increase the number of robins into double figures. Now you can’t walk through the Rangatira bush without black robins following you from branch to branch.

The team here does not actively manage the breeding of the robins, but helps DOC to keep an eye on how the birds are doing. Most of the work involves following robins to find their nests, and checking them every few days for eggs and then chicks. We also search for Chatham Island warbler and tomtit nests.

Part of Melanie’s research looks at the effects of predators on the habits of songbirds. On mainland NZ, songbirds sit for much longer on the nest. Moving about and getting on and off the nest can attract the attention of cats, rats and stoats so the birds tend to stay pretty still, and when their chicks hatch they will only visit the nest to feed them three or four times an hour. Although it was farmed for many years, Rangatira Island has never had any introduced predators. The songbirds here move on and off the nest all day, and can feed their chicks up to twenty times an hour. To quantify this, nests are filmed for six hour periods at two stages during the breeding season: once nine days after the eggs are laid and again when the chicks are about 10 days old.

Learn more about Dr Melanie Massaro's research at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury: http://www.biol.canterbury.ac.nz/people/massaro.shtml.

On the rocks please! November 4th

2009-11-12T11:04:00.000-08:00

You have most likely got the impression that Rangatira island is a remote little place. It is 800 kilometres east of Christchurch, and 45 minutes ahead. When we are getting up at 5:30 in the morning to film robin nests, it is 4:45 am in New Zealand. The island lies 45º south of the equator, in the strip of ocean known as the Roaring Forties that is famous for its violent swells and rough weather. There is nothing between us and Antarctica.

As for technology, we have solar panels on the hut roof that provide enough energy to power the emergency radios and one light bulb. We cook with gas. So how, you might ask, am I writing a blog? Well, thanks to the University of Canterbury Science Outreach programme, the School of Biological Sciences and the Brian Mason scientific and technical trust, we have a satellite phone that hooks us into the world of email – although finding a spot to get a clear satellite signal has been a bit tricky! In fact the best place we have found so far is out on the rocky platform to the north which is really quite pleasant on a sunny day. What more could you want? I have great ocean views - and not many people can say they share their office with shore plovers and skuas (friendly ones luckily!) But I’m not looking forward to the storms…

Homes for petrels - November 3rd

2009-11-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

The most important part of Abi and Briggs’ work during this visit to Rangatira is opening up the Chatham petrel burrows. These birds are not doing so well, with only a few hundred pairs nesting on this island and a few more on Chatham Island itself. To keep tabs on the population, each Chatham petrel nest on Rangatira has been identified and replaced with an artificial burrow, with a pipe for the entrance and a wooden box to nest in.

The petrels arrive late in the season, and often in the past, they would arrive to find their burrows had been taken by broad-billed prions, which are slightly bigger and much more aggressive birds – easily capable of killing a Chatham petrel. DOC rangers block off the entrances to the petrel burrows until a week before the petrels are due to arrive on the island.

The entrance to each nest box is also covered with a neoprene “excluder,” with a small slit in it. Seabirds become “imprinted” on their burrows – which means they remember their exact location, even though they may be away at sea for years before coming back to breed. They somehow manage to drop through the forest canopy just a few metres from their burrows every time. I’ve been told that Taiko, another endangered petrel, has such amazing night navigation that it can sweep straight in from the sea and in through the door of its nest without pause, just folding its wings in at the last second. The excluder doesn’t stop the bird’s entry to the burrow; it just makes it more difficult so that only the birds who own that nest, who have imprinted on that particular burrow, will try to push through. The prions are just looking for an easy place to lay their eggs – they like to avoid digging new burrows - and when faced with the excluder they will not try hard enough to get inside.

Abi and Briggs spend days unblocking the petrel burrows and cleaning out last year’s nesting material – plus hundreds of wetas, and the odd really big spider. When you bring wetas into daylight, they have a nasty habit of leaping for nearest dark spot, diving down sleeves, collars, into packs or straight back into the nest box. Last job of the day? Finding all the six-legged passengers that have hidden themselves in your pockets, socks, hood and hair! Don’t bring them into the hut!

To learn more about the Department of Conservation's work with the Chatham petrel follow this link: http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-animals/birds/sea-and-shore-birds/chatham-petrel-ranguru/

From rat motels.......... November 2nd

2009-11-10T12:17:00.000-08:00

While the others are out searching for more robin nests, Abi has some things to do for the department of Conservation. Although the island is predator free, there is a lot of work involved keeping it that way. There are bait stations and tracking tunnels all over the place to detect if any rats or stoats have made it to the island and all of them need to be checked to see if any of the rat bait has been eaten. Today, some bait does need replacing but generally it has been nibbled at only by wetas, which seem to be unaffected.

DOC has also placed “rat motels” just inside the trees along the coast. If rats get here, the first thing they will do is run all over the island looking for other rats. The “motels” are just the sort of places rats like to live: dry, warm and filled with nesting material. Again, these help to detect the arrival of predators. Rats would have a catastrophic effect on the birds here. It would take no effort at all for them to dine out on the ground-dwelling seabirds and then move on to the poorly-hidden, friendly robins.

To learn more about the Department of Conservation's work on the Chatham Islands follow this link: http://www.doc.govt.nz/by-region/chatham-islands/

Rangatira Island - Watch out for the Skuas! - November 1st

2009-11-09T17:29:00.000-08:00

The coastline of Rangatira looks a bit bleak from a distance. Up close though, it is a whole different story. The rock ledges that jut out into the sea are coated with green and pink algae, and thrashing forests of golden bull kelp. It is the sort of place you could spend hours wandering from rock pool to rock pool, prospecting for orange starfish and sea anemones and tiny transparent shrimp. But there is one problem: skuas.

These are the same birds you may have seen ripping apart penguin chicks on documentaries about Antarctica. They are the major natural predator of the seabird world, and they are afraid of nothing. I, on the other hand, am terrified of them! They must have a wing span of nearly two feet and solid bodies, but it is their eyes that scare me most.

There is a moment, just after you hear wings over head, when they wheel around to face you; a second when they seem paused in the air, eye to eye, taking aim, lining you up. It is hard to shake that gaze, hard to look away. Then suddenly you realize that they are doubling in size as they dive towards you at speed. They have the power to knock you over if you don’t see them coming, and they will keep attacking, over and over until you leave their patch of coast.

To be fair, they are only trying to safeguard their chicks, which they raise in exposed nests on the rocks, but it is a bit disconcerting being attacked when you are trying to commune with the sea. The best defense against this protected bird is to carry the flower stalk off a flax bush. Apparently the skuas aim for the highest point – personally, from the look in their eyes, I still think they are going for your head, but with a stick there they have to pull up before they hit you.

Into the forest - October 31st

2009-11-04T11:42:00.000-08:00

Seabird burrows are literally everywhere in the bush here, forming a labyrinth just under the ground. As Abi put it, it is like walking on swiss cheese made of dirt. People have estimated that there is a burrow every 30 centimetres – enough burrows for a population of several million seabirds.

To avoid crushing the burrows, and any chicks inside, we all wear petrel boards on our feet. These are large rectangles of wood that are strapped over hiking boots with snowboard bindings. It takes a while to get used to walking in them – it’s very easy to stand on your own feet and go flying, especially when searching for nests off the track where the forest is thick with supplejack and muhlenbeckia vines. But petrel boards are very important as they spread your body weight over a greater area and prevent you from breaking through the ground and collapsing nests, in much the same way as snowshoes stop you sinking into the snow.

The burrows have also affected the forest. As the thin soil is undermined by tunnels and nests, the trees have only a weak root system. Generally, the trees are under 20 centimetres in diameter. There are a few really big old Akeake but mostly the forest is young, with larger trees tending to fall over in the high winds. There is also little to no undergrowth, apart from the odd kawakawa plant, as seedlings are trampled by the birds when they return from the sea in the evenings.

Home on the Island - October 30th

2009-11-03T13:16:00.000-08:00

About a hundred metres into the bush is the hut we will live in. It is small and green and hung all around the outside with equipment – life jackets, generators, daypacks, binoculars, gumboots, tripods and petrel boards. The majority of Melanie’s team, who work on the Black Robin Project, have been here for two weeks already and they have made the hut into a very cosy little place. There is no heating but once you get four or five people in the main room, you only need to wear a few layers of thermals and fleece and ugh boots to be really quite warm!

Our arrival brings Rangatira’s human population to six: Melanie Massaro runs the songbird research; Kevin Drew and Alison Botha, who I will introduce in the next few days, are her field assistants; Abi, the DOC ranger from the main Chatham island; Briggs, an apprentice ranger from the mainland who has come to assist with the Rangatira work; and me, Alex.

And you don’t need to go far to meet the avian population. The first bird comes to meet me on the hut verandah. Eddie the tomtit spends most of the day swinging on the washing line in between the socks and towels or hanging from the rafters, chirping away to anyone and everyone who is around.

Journey to the "Leap of Doom" - October 29th

2009-11-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

Grey light was seeping into the bay at Owenga when we pulled up in the truck. The boat, the Acheron, was eased out into the waves by tractor and we were away into a sloppy, choppy following sea. An hour and a half of pitching and rolling across Pitt Strait was almost enough to bring my raisin toast back out to meet me but suddenly we were rounding Pitt Island and here we were: on Rangatira.

Glen, the captain of Acheron, asked if I was ready for the “leap of doom.” What he meant was this: the front landing on the North coast of the island is actually just a massive rocky ledge. He would get the boat as close as he could while we crawled around the wheelhouse to the forepeak. Marlon the deckhand would be there on the bow to help steady us, but when the surging water closed the gap we had to jump. I was not long above the churning water though. In seconds, I was flying onto the rocks but, to be honest, I think Marlon threw me because I was taking too long.

All our gear came next, the waterproof buckets hurled one by one from the bow. We had arrived on the Black Robin’s island, our home for the next 10 weeks.

Good-bye to the Mainland - October 27th

2009-11-02T19:53:00.000-08:00

The day I left Christchurch was stormy and wet – I did not hold out much hope for sunshine in the Chatham Islands. But after two hours of the chattiest flight I had ever been on – everyone knew each other on the full plane – we came down into shorts-and-Tshirt weather. No time to relax though. There was a lot to do before heading out to Rangatira.

As a nature reserve, the island has the highest level of protection that can be applied in New Zealand. Everything, absolutely everything we take, needs to go through quarantine. We are shut in a room within a room, spending hours picking all seeds and bits of grass out of socks and shirts and brushing the Velcro clasps of wet weather gear with lice combs. There are bolt holes along the walls so that any creatures we may have in our gear will run into traps. No pests can get to Rangatira. Nothing can put the birdlife at risk.

Late in the afternoon, Abi Liddy, a DOC ranger who has been looking after me since I arrived in the Chathams, tells me that a vicious southerly is approaching. It is due to hit lunchtime Thursday, so the fishermen who will take us to Rangatira Island want to leave at dawn. What does that mean? We have to be ready to leave at 4:30 am, in the pitch black of the early morning! Luckily I wouldn’t be going alone. Abi was coming too, as was Briggs, another visiting ranger, to do some DOC work on the island.

Meet Alex

2009-10-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

Hi! My name is Alex and I’ll be keeping you up-to-date with life on Rangatira Island for the first five weeks of the field trip. Right now, I live in Dunedin where my favourite animal is a blue heeler called Herb who likes to collect things from around the house and pile them beside the front door for when you get home. He also likes licking shoes.

Over the last five years I have explored as much of the world as I could and I have had loads of different jobs. One year, I worked on a luxury yacht that had gold-plated toilet-brush handles and acres of wood-panelling that I had to clean with a cotton bud - but it was worth it for the chance to sail across the Atlantic and visit desert islands in the Caribbean. We even went through the Panama Canal four times.

During my travels, I have been close enough to touch real red-hot lava on a volcano in Guatemala - I don’t recommend wearing shorts! I went ziplining through the jungle in Panama and visited Aztec ruins in Mexico. I spent a summer living in a basement in Rome with seven other people and a scorpion. In Morocco, I played football in the sand dunes on the edge of the Sahara desert and slept in a castle built out of straw and camel dung. Diving in Thailand, I was bitten (nibbled at, really) by schools of tiny stripey fish and followed by leopard sharks (they didn’t bite).

So far I have been to thirty-five countries but never to New Zealand’s outer edges. Rangatira Island will be a completely new adventure and an opportunity to use what I have learned through my studies of Science Communication at Otago University. I am especially excited about getting up close to all the local seabirds as I work with Melanie and the other scientists on the island and I’m really looking forward to meeting the Black Robins!

Why go to Rangatira Island for 13 weeks!!!

2009-10-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

Dr Melanie Massaro and her team from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury are preparing to leave for Rangatira Island to study many birds that live there. Access to the Rangatira is extremely limited and only a handful of people will visit the island each year. Melanie and her team will spend 13 weeks on the island with little contact with the outside world - this means her team need to choose carefully what food and equipment to take with them. There is no mall to go to if they have forgotten something!

Melanie spends 3 months of the year on Rangatira Island to gather data for her research. Native birds are constantly under threat on mainland New Zealand from introduced predators such as rats and cats. Introduced bird species such as blackbirds have flourished under the same conditions. Melanie is interested in why this is so. There is also some evidence showing that mainland native birds are changing their behaviours to cope with the introduced predators.

The forest of Rangatira Island allows Melanie to investigate the behaviour of various bird species that have evolved without introduced predators (there are no introduced predators on this island). She then compares the behaviour of the Rangatira birds with similar species on the New Zealand mainland to see if the mainland species are starting to adapt to the introduced predators.

Melanie is also interested in studying population bottlenecks and the effect this has on a species. A population bottleneck occurs when then the number of breeding individuals within a population fall to very low levels. This means that only the genetic material from a small number of individuals within the population will be passed onto future generations. This results in a loss of genetic varation in the population.

Many bird species on Rangatira Island have passed through a population bottleneck. Melanie is interested in investigating what effect the loss of genetic variation has on several different bird species including the Black Robin and the Chatham Island Tomtit.

Click here for more information on Melanie's research.