Welcome Javier and Julia

The last two ribs of our team came directly from Spain, more specifically from Madrid. Javier and Julia, or Jamon e Cecina (their nicknames in Corvo), are students of Forestry who came to complete their practical course with us. However they have been very helpful in other activities of the project. Their sympathy has led them to integrate easily in the team and have been very well accepted by everyone in Corvo.

Project is news in «Público» - a Portuguese newspaper

Ecosphere came out today in a news story about various actions that have been unfolding in Safe Islands for Seabirds project. Also underlines the new artificial colonies created and the plan to make Corvo Island a predator free island.

http://ecosfera.publico.pt/noticia.aspx?id=1433700

Tests to anti-predator fence follow the right track!

As we wrote before, in early March had put a couple of wild mice Mus musculus into the area to test the anti-predators fence. Action that proved the effectiveness of our fence as a barrier to this species. Not so good results we had at the end of March to test the fence in relation to trasposability by cats.

fig. 1 - Ship rat Rattus rattus

Last Saturday we started testing whether the fence would work as an effective barrier to another species of predator introduced in Corvo Island - the Ship rat Rattus rattus (fig. 1). Once again the fence has proven effective. And our new tenant appears to be quite relaxed in their new home. Today we left another ship rat into the area to demonstrate the true effectiveness of the fence (fig. 2).

fig. 2 - Ship rat Rattus rattus

Meanwhile we have started improving our fence to test whether it can effectively contain cats as well.

Regards to all.

Building a Model of the Cliffs of Corvo Island

As already mentioned above we want to built a model of the cliffs of Corvo to establish Cory's Shearwater habitats on the cliffs. To do that we will drive around the island by boat and take pictures of the cliff which will then be digitalized in a Geo Information System.

Left: 3D figure of Corvo Island

Right: 2 merged photos in a Geo Information System

Wednesday we finally had only little wind, waves, clouds and a boat with skipper available so that we could get our first pictures. We started on the Westside and did a row of 25 pictures from a distance of 300m but tested as well distances of 100, 200 and 400 meter. We shot the pictures with two different cameras in two different formats. The cameras are: the new waterproof Fijnpix Z33 WP and a Canon Power Shoot A610. And now lets just hope for a row of nice days next week.

atalog
(The correct form is «Até logo», but it's how sounds like to our Volunteer Eva Immler and means "See you later" in Portuguese, Portuguese language is not an easy language at all)

Eva Immler