Later that year Alec had men searching the mountains for nesting burrows. He went on a short trip which he had planned with another bird enthusiast, a man of the cloth whom I shall refer to simply as N. In the event, N missed the boat. After some time he went to Alec’s office to see if he was back, and he found a group of the men who had come to report they had found nests with birds in them.
What should have been a truly joyous occasion then went horribly wrong. “N organized the men to go up the next day to rob the nests!” When Alec got back he received a phone call from one of his men to say that they had the birds and eggs!! He rushed up the mountain and found “a horror scene. A collection of birds (live) and eggs, which N was hoping to take with him.”
There were no wildlife laws back then that could help Alec in this situation, Frank told me, and he had no authority to act. Nevertheless, “he managed to negotiate that all the birds except two be released and he would try and return all the eggs except two to the nests.” The birds were released, and presumably survived, but, bad weather made it impossible to even try to return the eggs.
After that the Zino’s kept very quiet about things for fear of further collectors. But Alec and Frank continued to return during the breeding season and observe the little colony. “It was not encouraging,” Frank told me. “The breeding success at the known nesting sites was terribly low.”
During the season of 1986 they began systematic monitoring of the colony: at the one known nest ledge there were only six nests with eggs in them. And not one of the young birds survived the summer – the reason? Almost certainly predation on eggs and chicks by rats. This finding was shocking, and led to the launching of the first serious conservation organization, Freira Conservation Project (FCP), for predator control and systematic monitoring of the Zino’s colony. “On the 12th September 1987,” Frank told me, “we pulled a ball of down out of a nest – the first chick we had ever handled! It was ringed, returned to its nest, and eventually fledged.” Now that they were controlling the rats, at least that one chick survived that year, although it was the only one.
Then in 1992, just as they thought that they were winning the battle against rats, “we suddenly lost 10 birds to cats on one of the breeding ledges… almost 25% of the known breeding population,” said Frank. The new conservation group, FCP, as well as baiting and killing rats, then began trapping cats (since then about 10 cats per year have been caught in the breeding grounds). As a result the breeding success of the petrels began to improve during following seasons.
Looking back over those years, from the discovery of the few nesting birds in 1969, it seems amazing that the colony survived. They only lay and hatch one egg – and they were up against cats, rats – and egg collectors. It is lucky that the petrels can live up to 50 years – otherwise the species would probably have become extinct with such high predation rates. How fortunate, too, that the Zino’s and their group of enthusiasts had determined never to give up.
