Bermuda Calls Bird Man
Illawarra Mercury
Monday May 31, 2004
IT is a tale of death, destruction, and a daring ocean rescue.
At its heart are some tiny rare seabirds - little more than soft balls of fluff - and the Government of Bermuda.
And now a Thirroul scientist has taken the leading role.
National Parks and Wildlife Service officer Nick Carlile has been summoned from his northern Illawarra home by the Bermuda Government to join a desperate rescue mission to help save the Bermuda petrel - one of the world's rarest birds - by relocating chicks.
For more than three centuries the bird was believed to be extinct until 18 breeding pairs were found on a rocky outcrop off the North Atlantic island in the early 1950s.
The exposed islet was a far cry from the petrels' habitat of soft ground, but they had somehow survived the centuries, enduring wild weather and deadly attacks from larger birds.
``They were surviving in rocky crevices, a nesting habitat completely alien to their usual sandy soil burrows. It was a real miracle that there were any left," Mr Carlile said.
``Since the discovery of that remnant colony the local government has made painstaking efforts to bring this iconic bird back from the edge."
The population increased to about 70 breeding pairs but suffered another major setback recently when hurricanes swept through the region.
Now, more than 300 years since the survivors moved to their unsuitable rocky outcrop, Mr Carlile has been called in to take some chicks home - or at least to a place that looks like it.
The chosen place is nearby Nonsuch Island, which has been re-established as an island paradise with artificial burrows for the chicks.
The problem is that, after more than three centuries in the wrong place, the birds now think they belong where they don't.
Mr Carlile has a tiny window of opportunity to move the chicks - when they are old enough to be separated from their parents but young enough to forget where they live.
If the birds are taken too late they will return to the place that got them in so much trouble in the first place.
``Once the chicks have been translocated, we will have to hand feed them with fish and squid until they fledge," Mr Carlile said.
Fourteen of the 29 chicks born this year will be moved as part of the daring rescue plan.
Mr Carlile was invited to join the project because of his success in saving the Australian Gould's petrel from extinction.
© 2004 Illawarra Mercury