Bird colony success could save species

Department of Conservation

SHEARWATERS RETURN: The establishment of a colony of Hutton's Shearwaters on the Kaikoura Peninsula has been hailed as a conservation success.

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A handful of rare sea birds that landed on the Kaikoura Peninsula just before Christmas to breed have unwittingly marked a huge milestone towards the survival of an entire species.

About 300 Hutton's shearwaters have been translocated to the peninsula from the high and rugged flanks of the Kaikoura Ranges over the past four years in an effort to create a new population of the endangered sea birds and assist in the species' population recovery. The shearwater is a species found only at Kaikoura.

Department of Conservation South Marlborough biodiversity programme manager Phil Bradfield said the return of the first shearwaters, which had just spent two or three years feeding and growing in Australian coastal waters, marked the day the project could be called a success. "It's just fantastic," he said.

Although it is not known exactly how many birds have returned because they cannot be disturbed, toothpicks that blocked the entrances of several burrows on the peninsula were flattened, showing shearwaters had entered them.

Hutton's shearwaters usually live in steep, rugged and often snowy locations about 1000m to 1600m above sea level.

They arrive in August each year, spend two months courting with mates and relocating burrows, then lay a single egg between October and November.

In 2005, 12 chicks were taken from their alpine perches and given a new home on the peninsula in a fenced area, where volunteers spent many hours building burrows, planting tussocks and feeding the chicks until they grew big enough and fledged.

After this pilot transfer of chicks, about 300 birds were eventually translocated over three years in the hope they would return to the peninsula to breed. Last week with the aid of a sound system that played the birds' calls every night between November and March, recorded before they left so they would not follow their parents back to the mountains that finally happened.

A trust dedicated to working on the shearwaters' survival has been established, called the Hutton's Shearwaters Charitable Trust.

The founder of the trust and the man who discovered the two surviving shearwater colonies, Geoff Harrow, said a few sceptics believed the birds could not be shifted from an alpine, snowy, tussocky habitat to sea level.

"To get a three-year-old bird back is really exciting," Harrow said.

- The Marlborough Express