Cory's shearwater S.O.S

Less than 100 years ago was common hunting hundreds of Cory's Shearwater for different uses in Corvo Island.
At such hard time, hunger forced people to seek alternative food, for example, "Erva do Calhau" (an algae) and "Saramago" (an herb), because they could not cultivate the land during the winter due heavy storms.
The Cory's shearwater were also a food supplement for some people who were forced to learn some biological aspects of this species, such as hatching dates, that allowed to pick up eggs, and the period in which chicks had less fat and more meat. They also learned how to extract the oil from these birds to spread after their tools. Even serving as bait in the local fishery.

Sandra

Two British experts visit Corvo Island

Kevin and Ruth Standring are experts in drafting and designing touristic trails and routes for hikers.
Their mission is to analyze the feasibility of installing four hiking trails for the tourist who visit the island.

The Cory's shearwater activity: dataloggers

Logger work is not knew for SPEA and in the scope of the Marine IBA Life project we have used several troughout the islands of Azores, Madeira and in the Mainland. SPEA is currently working with Coimbra University in yet another project to identify with more detail the foraging areas of Cory's shearwaters and what may influence them. In these videos we can witness the deployment of small GPS devices that can last longer than 15 days and that will be essential for Filipe Ceia to know these seabird movements at sea for his Phd thesis.

Biological reserves creation

The project's goal is to create two reserves with optimal conditions for seabirds nesting. Our aims are to restore their natural ecosystem and we pretend to remove all the exotic species, and create the first endemic forest.

Monitoring activities in Vila Franca islet

Testing eradication of exotic rodents

Two different methods for the eradication of exotic rodents were being tested on Corvo Island.

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.

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.

My first day as biologist!!

On Tuesday evening we enjoyed a spectacular opportunity among the citizens of Corvo. SPEA held third public meeting about our project where were announced the actions had been carried out in collaboration with farmers to test rodents eradication procedures. Early results showed the effectiveness of the methodology, however, must be administered by specialized operators. Taking advantage of this event, we gave back to Corvo's children their field books and show them a video of the activity carried out last saturday. We could easily note the great joy of the young guys. The meeting was also attended by the European Commission which had been visiting the village and the project over the last days.

The peddy paper was a great success!!

One week ago, we organize a Peddy paper with the youth of Corvo. We show them how is the daily work of the team.
Children and technicians enjoyed the activities in each point, such as: using GPS to recover wax blocks used to track rodents, identification of endemic, native and exotic plants that are growing on Corvo, and visit a Cory's shearwater colony, among other things...
This week we will post a little video with such activities.
Don't miss it!!!

We found the first Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus)

Manx shearwater is one of seabird breeding in Corvo Island and, as happens with the Cory's shearwater, when inexperienced chicks leave the nest some of them fall down on streets due desorientation by public lighting.

Two weeks ago, we found the first Manx in "Vila do Corvo". In the morning, we ringed and weighed it, measured the length of the wing and collected a blood sample for genetic study. Later, we released it in the Biological Reserve of Corvo, into a Manx artificial nest to meet a new potential area for nesting. After a few minutes the bird left the nest and took his way to sea.

Hope it returns to artificial nest area for his first nesting season!!

Cory's shearwater peaked at posture a few days ago!

The same six Cory's shearwater colonies monitored last year by Ana Henriques, whose results are ready to be discussed on her Master thesis, began to be visited this year after Cory´s arrival in mid-March. 99% of the occupied nests last year were also occupied this year.

In Corvo, peak egg laying occurred on June 11 while last year it was on June 4. A week of difference compared to last year. Weather conditions could be the main cause, as we have seen in other places. However, it is too early to have concrete data on how it will be the breeding success of Shearwater this year.

It seems that some couples have trouble finding a hole to nest as you can see from the picture.

A few days after the peak of egg, some depredations have been detected.


We will keep the blog up-to-date on the current breeding season of Corvo Cory's!

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)