Official Project Website has a new design

Is now available a new version of the official Project's website on life-corvo.spea.pt/en/. Where about you may find the description of our project and the environmental outlook of Corvo Island and Vila Franca Islet.

Also you can have a look or download from "Documents" all publicity materials and reports we have produced. The "Gallery" for images and movies will be available soon.
Keep following us.

The first Cory's shearwater chick leaves the nest!!

Last week we started to ring, to weight and to collect samples of Cory's shearwater chicks that are almost ready to leave the nests.


Most chicks are fully grown and almost fledging, and last Thursday night we rescued the first in Corvo Village, that was released at sea the next morning.
SOS Cagarro campaign is starting to have some busy periods and the volunteers should be ready in the next few days because the peak of the fledging season is about to occur, now that the chicks are getting ready to go to the sea.

Regional Government of Azores visited Corvo island

The Regional Government of Azores realized the annually visit to occidental group.

Cory's shearwater breeding success

To understand how the Cory's Shearwater population of Corvo is evolving over the years, we are monitoring six different sub-colonies aiming to estimate their breeding success.

Corvo receives lots of visitors...

Last week the Scientific comission visited Corvo Islands and evaluated the project actions. During the meeting it was discussed in what way the methods used can be improved and how we should proceed to the data treatment.

The visits were very profitable and resulted in various valuable sugestions and ideas to improve the project actions. We managed to visit all the project intervention areas, although the winter days are coming. In between rain and strong winds we were lucky enough to catch some sunny moments to visit the altitude reserve and show the "Caldeirão" to the Comission.


Beside the project team, the meeting counted with the presence of Jaime Ramos (University of Coimbra), Manuel Nogales (CSIC), Steffen Oppel (RSPB), Raquel Ferreira (SRAM) and Joaquim Teodósio (SPEA).

On Monday the strong wind forecast made us fear the worst, but finally the plane managed to land and all our visitors departed. We hope that they manage to come back soon enough and to help us again.

Abundance estimate of rodents on Cory's shearwater colonies

Every month the team sets up a trap grid for rats and mice at the Cory's shearwater colonies. trough this capture/recapture method we can monitor the population of rodents and know their densities and home ranges.

Wild cats detection with surveillance cameras

The project has 17 surveillance cameras that are used to analyze the variation in the abundance of wild cats among different colonies.
Every two weeks a technician visits the colonies to check and move each camera to a new capture point.

Cat census in Corvo island

The project team monthly conducted a series of activities to monitor the cat population on the island.
This summer, with the cooperation of the Corvo inhabitants, we made a campaign consisted on the neutering of all the domestic cats inthe village and to tag them with a small identification microchip.
This campaign is necessary to prevent the increase of the feral cat population in the near future.

First seabirds sound recordings in the project!!

We have the first seabirds sounds recordings obtained using a recorder placed in the cliffs on the west side of the island. The second phase is the construction of sonogramas through the program "Song Scope", which will allow us to identify the vocalizations of different species.
We will change the recorder to a cliff on the east side, where in the night census were recorded Petrels, between July and August.

We will continue to give more news about this issue!!

European Commission visits our project!

Last week, three representatives of the European Commission came to Corvo to check the progress and the work done on all the areas on the scope of the LIFE project.
The visit went smoothly and the commission was pleases with the progress of the actions.
Several people attended this formal visit and related meetings, nominately the SPEA team and representatives from all the partner institutions: Frederico Cardigos (Regional Director of Environment), Jorge Cardoso (Island Nature Park Director), Manuel Rita (Mayor of Corvo), Luis Costa (SPEA Executive Director), Iván Ramírez (European Marine Program Coordinator), José Pedro Tavares (RSPB), Pedro Luis Geraldes, Sandra Hervias, Nuno Oliveira and Carlos Silva (project team).
Last night the third project public meeting took place in the Santa Casa da Misericórdia opened to the general public. The session was opened by the Regional Director of Environment and the Executive Director of SPEA, and was we had the nice surprise to see that we had an audience of around 80 persons.