Sunday, May 30, 2010

La Paparazza arrived

On Friday morning arrived one more element to our project team.

Maria Vazquez is from Sarria, Lugo Province, and born in 1984, graduated from the University of Granada in Audiovisual Communication, having previously completed her studies in Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Valladolid. She conducted several courses related to photographic and video editing.

Her work will consist in performing audiovisual and photographic reports on the different activities of the project that are currently underway, that will be used for the dissemination of the project.

Over the next six months we will have full coverage of entire project, as well of flora and fauna of Corvo Island. She will be something like a second shadow of project staff people.

Hopefully well be given to Mary around here.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Looking for cats and who look at them!

As mentioned previously, last month we began monitoring the activities of cats around the colonies of Cory's shearwater. For this we use automatic cameras with infra-red sensor. This work results in a few thousand pictures every 2 weeks that need to be processed. This is where you can be really helpful.

The processing can be done from your home and is just needed an internet connection and Microsoft Excel program. Below is an example of one of the cat pictures recorded last week.


If you are interested, get in touch to send you more information.
Just comment on this post or else send an email to nuno.oliveira@spea.pt.

Cheers!

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Technical visit from New Zealand to Biological Reserve of Corvo

Although the tests to the anti-predator fence have been successful with regard to mice, the same was not true regarding rats and cats. In view of these difficulties, we found ourselves in need of resorting to Xcluder, a New Zealand expert team in erradications and anti-predator fences.


It was with this objective that during this weekend a technique of Xcluder, Jo Ritchie, visited Corvo Island. Meanwhile we were walking around the boundaries of Raven Biological Reserve where we want to build the anti-predator fence, Jo was indicating possible problems and consequent solutions due topographical features and the typical hard weather conditions of Corvo Island.


Jo, Pedro e Sandra

The concluding remarks we got from Jo were very exciting and hopefully we have the Biological Reserve of Corvo fenced and free of predators before the end of this year.


Greetings from Corvo.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Hello, we are Jamon and Cecina!


We arrived in Corvo nearly one month ago, but the time has passed very quickly! The island is especially precious and we feel very comfortable.


Our work here involve different ways to search invasive plants on the island, to locate it and, if necessary, remove it to avoid the displacement of native species such as Urze Erika azorica and Cedro-do-mato Juniperus brevifolia.

To do it we use maps of the island divided into grids of 200 x 200 meters where we record patches of exotic vegetation.

Yesterday we got more than 200 Faia-da-terra Myrica faia were placed in a grid of transplants in the greenhouse.

The fieldwork is always rewarding, but also the time spent with a project team and the population of Corvo, who have been lovely since day one!

Julia Herrera e Javier Roma