Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Cooking science

Hi everyone!

With Cory's shearwater already around Corvo Island and taking into account the results we had last year on the predation of eggs and juveniles, for this year we are trying a new approach to study the impact of rodents in the reproduction of Shearwater.

Why cooking science??
Because that is what we got up to yesterday afternoon, as you can see from the photos. If we wrote an article about the scientific activity of yesterday, the keywords would be made paraffin, chocolate, bath, pan and cuvettes for making ice.



In order to understand the activity of the rodent community around the Cory's colonies of Corvo, we will make grids of wax blocks. Just as a little note, we will build any wax wall around the Cory's colonies. In recent years this technique has been increasingly used to study the activity of rodents. On one hand the results have been very useful and this approach has been revealing to estimate accurate abundances of rodents, the other is a low-cost technique.

In practice this technique consist in put on field small pieces of wax (with attractive for rodents - in our case was chocolate) as a pre-defined grid. After a few days all the cubes are removed and examined in order to account for the marks left by rodent bites. As each species of rodent has a characteristic dentition structure, it is still possible to know which species occur around the study areas.



Looking forward to overcome some limitations that arose last year in this part of the project.

Keep tuned!
Regards.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Spring has just arrived to Vila Franca do Campo Islet

SPRING HAS ARRIVED


First Cory's Shearwater picture for the Islet in 2010

March, spring has arrived, with many vestiges of the cold winter though. And with it also the swallows arrive, in the case of Azores, mean Cory's Shearwater arrived (Calonetris diomedea borealis) for one more breeding season.

Between January and March 2010 were installed on the island 150 artificial nests for Little Shearwater (Puffinus assimilis), for Madeiran Storm-petrel (Oceanodroma castro) and for Cory's Shearwater (Calonetris diomedea borealis).

Artificial nest for Cory's

It was made one night monitoring the nests and already can hear the call of Cory's that invade the island and they do fill life with profiles in night flight there is demand for their nests. The last monitoring took place last weekend when we found 44% of 199 Cory's nests already with some signs of occupation. In which, one of the couples already looked at one of the new "costs controlled houses" - name suggested by the volunteers who helped count the nests on the island.

During this month we started the control of exotic vegetation, releasing the space occupied by it for Cory's nesting to later be replanted for endemic plants. But due to bad weather and rough sea has not been possible to advance the work of eradication. At the same time, native plants are being grown in nurseries SPEA through LIFE + project "Laurissilva Sustentável". Already germinated about 2500 plants to restore the endemic vegetation of Vila Franca do Campo Islet.

Some information campaigns took place in Vila Franca do Campo region for the first school students of 4 different schools. We aimed to demystify the infamous "hairstyle of the islet" and talk a bit about marine birds that occurring there. A total of 68 students participated in these activities, and did show big interest for our project. These actions were organized by the Municipality of Vila Franca do Campo.


Information campaign in Vila Franca do Campo (foto: Ana Borges)

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

2-1

The closed zone wins over cats 2-1 and stays top after 3 tests completed.



The closed area climbed two places in the last test.

The first cat got off on the right foot with a 0-1 victory against closed area. The next clear chance of the game was better for the closed area, however, the second cat did not create real danger to closed area and we have to release the next day.



The closed area was able to dribble the attempt of the third cat who carried out rapid and high jumps in the core. We hope that one can not reassemble!

Rats will be the next opponent of the closed zone, who does not have ratings in the Test League.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Navigating the storms

Hello comrades!

Only 3 days remaining to enter the Spring season and still there are many storms in Corvo.

In the biological reserve of
the project was installed an electric fence around the artificial nests, squares of vegetation and pit-fall traps for insects. Thus we have prevented the interaction and possible destruction of the work done by cattle, and even with days of strong winds and rain, all experiments started are intact.



This weekend, we began to build the nests of Cory’s shearwater. While nests of Storm petrel, Little shearwater and Manx shearwater were made with flowerpot holder, tubes and plastic covers, the nests of Cory’s shearwater will be built with blocks and cement caps, thus we want to ensure the increase of breeding sites over a longer period of time.

We still have a few hours of night work because of the use of traps to catch wild cats. We got a recapture last night. The cat had already chip and had been sterilized three weeks ago so it was a great opportunity to leave it into the closed area and test it, as we already did with mice.

Finally, we would like you to introduce our new partner for the project. Her name is Eva and she is from Germany. Eva will be in Corvo until next May to survey the vegetation of the cliffs through photos that will be taken from the sea. Desires of many days of calm sea and good job Eva!

Happiness for all!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Trapping rodents!

After the long-awaited arrival of Sherman traps, we can begin trapping the larger rodents as well - Ship rat Rattus rattus and Norway rat Rattus norvegicus.
As we had already published earlier, last January we began trapping Wild mice Mus domesticus in Biological Reserve of Corvo, High Biological Reserve and 2 non-intervention areas at different altitudes (30 and 400 m above sea level). With the arrival of Sherman traps we could twice enlarge the trapping grids for 25 Sherman and 24 Pest-stop and so also start trapping Rattus sp. in order to estimate the variation of the density of rodents throughout the year.
The grids are set in field like next photo. Of course the small Pest-stop go unnoticed amid the huge Sherman.

Biological Reserve of Corvo


The results were not slow to appear. Wild mice are being high caught in lowland areas where yesterday we already captured the first ship rat.

Wild mice Mus musculus

Hopefully able to post some data soon.
Hugs

Monday, March 1, 2010

Cats, sardines and sleepless nights...

The cat traps arrived! Last week we finally started trapping feral cats. Along 4 consecutive days, the traps are placed in different locations on the outskirts of the village of Corvo, where wild cats often wander. We leave a bait in the traps to attract the cats, in this case we use canned sardines (a delicacy!) and await eagerly for the first watch to the traps, when we can actualy check if a cat was caught.


Every 4 hours we check the traps, to prevent the cats from staying too long in the cold, rain and wind, which means that we've been going through a couple of sleepless nights, waking up at 4am, but of course we do it willingly and can never get enough of it!

The first night could not have gone better, we caught 2 cats! We transfered them to the veterinary clinic, where they were in a quieter and much warmer environment than in the bitter cold of the past few nights here in Corvo.

The next day, the cats were anesthetized, neutered and identified with a microchip. We also registered some relevant data such as gender, age, colour, characteristic marks and their general state of health. During anesthesia, we cut the tip of the left ear of each cat, in order to distinguish cats that are already neutered from those which are not, making it easier to release recaptured cats and spare them from more stressful moments in the traps.



Once the cats regain consciousness and are wide awake, they are released in the same area where they were caught and return to the wild.


After 4 nights trapping cats we were able to neuter 5 adult male cats. This week we placed the traps elsewhere at higher altitude, where many barns belonging to farmers exist, and we hope to continue with success.

We cannot thank enough to our dear friends Tiago and Nuno for the effort they've done to help us instaling the cat traps and checking them every night... so thanks for the fellowship!

Meanwhile, the number of spayed domestic cats has reached 43 cats (about 2/3 females and 1/3 males) and keeps on rising, little by little...