Rangatira Island Diary
During the summer 2009 field season a daily diary was kept and uploaded via satelite phone to a blog. The stories share the experiences of the researchers on Rangatira as well as introducing the local plants and animals.
Why go to Rangatira Island for 13 weeks?
October 2009
The day I left Christchurch was stormy and wet – I did not hold out much hope for sunshine in the Chatham Islands. But after two hours of the chattiest flight I had ever been on we came down into shorts-and-Tshirt weather. No time to relax though...
Grey light was seeping into the bay at Owenga when we pulled up in the truck. The fishing boat Acheron was eased out into the waves by tractor and we were away...
About a hundred metres into the bush is the hut we will live in. It is small and green and hung all around the outside with equipment. Our arrival brings Rangatira’s human population to six...
Seabird burrows are literally everywhere in the bush here, forming a labyrinth just under the ground. As Abi put it, it is like walking on swiss cheese made of dirt. To avoid crushing the burrows, and any chicks inside, we all wear petrel boards on our feet...
November 2009
The coastline of Rangatira looks a bit bleak from a distance. Up close though, it is a whole different story. It is the sort of place you could spend hours wandering from rock pool to rock pool, prospecting for orange starfish and sea anemones and tiny transparent shrimp. But there is one problem: skuas...
While the others are out searching for more robin nests, Abi has some things to do for the department of Conservation. Although the island is predator free, there is a lot of work involved keeping it that way. Rats would have a catastrophic effect on the birds here...
Chatham petrels are not doing so well, with only a few hundred pairs nesting on this island and a few more on Chatham Island itself. To keep tabs on the population, each Chatham petrel nest on Rangatira has been identified and replaced with an artificial burrow..
You have most likely got the impression that Rangatira island is a remote little place. So how, you might ask, am I writing a blog? Well, with much thanks we have a satellite phone that hooks us into the world – although finding a spot to get a clear satellite signal has been a bit tricky...
Rangatira Island is a great place to research some of New Zealand’s native songbirds including the black robins. Once upon a time they were the rarest birds in the world, with only five birds alive and only one female who produced fertile eggs...
Alison, Kev and Melanie have been hard at work for the last two weeks tracking the robins back to their nests. All of us carry a special robin nest hunting kit at all times, and the most important thing to have at your fingertips? Mealworms...
The team here is a close-knit one – it has to be when the entire world for us is this little island and the members of the black robin research team. We have almost no contact with the outside world, just a hello from DoC each morning and a one-way relationship with the weather forecast man on the radio.
The seabirds have been up for hours, making their loud trumpet noises under the hut and when I go outside the ground is crawling with them. It is 5:30 am and I’m getting involved in Mel’s research well and truly this time. It is my turn to set up a camera to film a robin’s nest for the first six hours...
Deep in the bush, we continue to visit the nests of warblers, tomtits and robins, usually every three days. Checking the nests is a bit like orienteering. You begin at the hut with the name of a track – say North Cross - and a code – AB02...
We have our first chicks! They are not the first chicks on the island – we have been hearing really high-pitched warbler cheeping for weeks - but they are the first to come from eggs we have been watching. Tiny, pink, wriggly little things that seem to be all mouth...
Tawhiti is well-known to Melanie. He was born in the first summer that she spent with the robins, in 2007, the son of Cash (the only black-banded robin on the island). Tawhiti has faced his share of tragedy...
If you look at a map of Rangatira, you will see that it is divided into two uneven halves. Skua Gully splits the island east to west – although it is not really a gully and is completely free of skuas...
Imagine being shipwrecked on Rangatira Island. Your boat rolling on a dark and oily sea. The sails hang slack, then snap out tight, first in one direction then another as the wind begins to gust. Now hold on! Your boat is driven before the storm until with a crash, you land on an unknown shore...
Shy is not a word normally applied to Kakariki, the red-crowned parakeet. Noisy? Yes, you can hear them screeching and cackling in the tree-tops from miles away. Messy? Definitely. But shy?...
Some people always leave things to the last minute – and that goes for Mathias and Lupé as well, a pair of one year-old black robins. They are still nest-building when others like Tawhiti and Asha already have growing chicks...
Now, where were we with our shipwreck story? Ahh yes, we had eaten paua and were getting on to the next course: fish. I have seen Bear Grylls (Man vs Wild?) use his trousers as a fishing-net while suspended from a tree in the jungle...
Weeks have a different shape on Rangatira. It is hard to remember what day it is anyway, but instead of five days and then a weekend, we have three days work then a morning off. What do you do with spare time on a tiny island?...
Remember that squirmy, white-tufted little chick from a week or so ago? Well, look at him now! He still has big, white, fluffy eyebrows but he has grown “pins” - thin, grey tubes with feathers inside...
Let's face it, this is a great place for a tomtit to live. But Fast Eddie, the tomtit, is looking a little ruffled recently. Instead of just one hut tomtit begging daily for worms, now we have two! Who is the competition?...
Tomtit numbers are falling on Rangatira. If we band all the tomtits that we find this summer, then next summer DOC will be able to count them. This will tell DOC scientists how that species is doing...
Black robins are very territorial birds. The male has a patch of forest which he defends against other robins, even during the winter. If you ever get to a place where you can see four robins at once, you know you are on a boundary between territories - and you won't miss it, because...
A Rangatira spider lives on our front porch and sometimes in my rain trousers – what a nasty surprise that was! He popped out the bottom of my trousers when I put my foot in the top. I just shrugged… Ha! Okay, I screamed!...
Tawhiti’s chicks are all grown up – so quickly! Two have been banded and we expect them to fledge any day now. They will be among the first chicks on the island to leave their nest.
And just when we were all starting to go a bit crazy from the isolation (you know, trying to talk bird language, making friends with prion chicks, that kind of thing), help arrived! A whole ship full of fellow bird-lovers anchored off Three Amigos Point, bringing civilisation and hot water...
I know I have mentioned Emma and Blue’s nest to you. She has built in exactly the same spot three years in a row, just adding an extension of new straw to the old nest, tucking in extra moss, a few softer feathers. As you can imagine, her nest is now much bigger than a normal robin nest...
Way, way out on the west coast, in a little patch of forest called Ikes Bush, lives Drusilla the Bold (aka kung-fu tomtit). She is Fierce with a capital F! If we go anywhere near her nest she welcomes us with the tomtit death-stare...
The adult robins are very patient with us, nevertheless, they like to watch us when we weigh their babies just to make sure we are gentle. Why do we collect this growth data? It is an important part of Melanie’s research to compare growth rates...
Now, I have told you a lot about the bird population of Rangatira but the human population has some unusual characteristics too – one of these is their habit of falling out of trees. Why does this happen on NZ’s offshore islands? Well, blame the prions...
It is very dark under the trees despite a full yellow moon, but quiet? No way! The sooty shearwaters yowl like cats, the storm petrels sound like yapping lapdogs and the penguins wheeze like ancient, emphysemic donkeys...
Lots of people have worked to save the black robin from extinction over the last seventy years and the support just keeps coming. Earlier this year, schools around New Zealand were given the opportunity to design a flag to be flown here on Rangatira, paying tribute to this little bird’s struggle for survival...
December 2009
I am on my way to check a Chatham Island tomtit nest on the south side of the island when I stumble across a big fat ball of fluff. He is huge and very stroppy when I stop to see if he is alright. His burrow has collapsed around him and he is sitting exposed to the elements...
The fishing boat “Acheron” has brought Sophie, Brigitta and Annika to join Mel and take over as robin-hunters, tomtit-watchers, chick-weighers, skua-dodgers and prion-rescuers.. I mean, as Melanie’s field assistants. Right now I have to go and bid a tearful farewell to Eddie the tomtit…
After a short course in nest checking 101 yesterday afternoon, Melanie sent us off with our list of nests to check first thing this morning. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of what and where the nests are on the island...
When I told people that I was coming out here to work on Black Robins, most of them, including the lady that I brought some underwear from at Farmers in Dunedin, said “Oh I know all about Old Blue.” Old Blue was the most famous Black Robin that ever lived...
One of the nests that Melanie sent me to check this morning was MM22 up on Jill’s track which had a chick that is about to fledge. The nest card for this one says that it is in Muehlenbeckia. Talk about an understatement!...
I especially love hearing what is happening on the Pyramid because you can hear the albatross screeching in the background. Lorna and her field assistant Dan are the official “tough cookies” of the satellite Chatham Islands, living on a rock which juts out of the sea just like a pyramid!...
It is as though we have families on the island, even if it’s just our favourite birds and their young. There I love working out names for the young just as they are about to fledge. It's about time for an update on some of our friends...
Although we have a toilet here on Rangatira, it is a composting toilet which is reserved for poos rather than wees. So when we need to wee, we find an appropriate bush to skulk behind. Thankfully there are a lot of bushes in the forest...
Today it was my turn for a morning off. What to do on my morning off? There is an entire island to explore with beaches, two summits and lots of bush containing friendly birds? I lay in bed for a moment mulling over the endless possibilities...
This afternoon I went to Whalers Bay which is fast becoming my favourite place on the Island. It has the most amazing rocky platforms on which almost nothing grows. It is home to a massive array of lichens, which aren’t actually plants but are a “joint venture”...
There are very few female tomtits on the Island this year. We’ve found only 13 tomtit nests so far. And even worse, none of the fledglings that Melanie banded last year have been re-sighted this year...
Mammals other than us do land here. And they seem to do so whenever I go fishing! New Zealand fur seals are beautiful in the water, lazily waving a flipper at me, totally at home just metres from the waves crashing onto the rocks...
Once you find a nest you fill out a card, letting everyone know the location and height of the nest and what species it belongs to. The back of the card is just like a nest Plunket book! Whenever we visit to check on the chicks we write it on the card...
Melanie is teaching us to identify trees at the moment as we’ll need to be able to tell them apart. The Chatham’s have a fabulous flora, much of which is endemic, which means that it only lives here...
One of the main reasons why Melanie is interested in studying black robins isn’t because they are very friendly and produce super-cute chicks, but because they are terribly rare. The robins today are the most inbred a population can be, because all are descendents from one happy couple...
Although as research assistants, Melanie thinks we’re great, none of us has ever had anything to do with birds before. We’re learning heaps. A mist-net is used to catch birds so we can band them and take samples for the research...
The limpets are huge! They are probably a species of Cellana limpet, but as I don’t have my seashore guide with me, I can’t be certain. I can say for certain though that these guys are about four times the size of the biggest limpets on the mainland.
Much of the work here involves looking for birds’ nests. For Melanie it is easy to tell which bird lives on which nest, but for the rest of us birding beginners, it isn’t always so obvious. So we have made up a quiz, can you match these birds with their nests
Like all good huts there is a lot of history in our little hut in Rangatira. My favourite bit of hut ephemera however is the log book. It’s fun just to read through to see the huge range of projects that have been carried out on this very special Island.
You must know by now that until 3 weeks ago I knew very little about birds. In case you are in the same boat as me, here is a crash course in the really cool things about birds that you didn’t know that you didn’t know...
We have some huge, charismatic bugs on Rangatira, which I am slowly getting used to. There are wetas everywhere. The Chatham Islands have over 800 species of insects and on islands like this one they are a very noticeable part of the ecosystem...
It’s Melanie’s Birthday today so we had a long breakfast with field trip pancakes and lots of coffee. We have lots of robin news, and each time we meet up together for meals we swap which nests have chicks and who might be rebuilding ready for clutch number two...
As many of the chicks have fledged and the nest checking takes much less time these days, if we work hard in the mornings there is less to do in the afternoon. So we took the spare time in the afternoon to go paua hunting in Thinornis Bay...
It’s Christmas Eve here on the Island though there is no way of telling it without having a calendar on the wall. I love Christmas carols, and hope you’ll join in singing this Rangatira Carol with us...
Merry Christmas! As we’re a bit out of the way here, Santa Clause didn’t find us on Rangatira, but we were visited by a very rare Christmas Giraffe, and decided to take him with us on our Christmas adventures...
We spent last night on the rocks up at Rangatira trig. As it was getting dark, I closed my eyes was almost asleep…..until there was a quiet “Whoosh” above me. Then more and more whooshes and as I opened my eyes I saw hundreds of Titi flying around the rock that we were on...
We’ve had a few adventures that have involved rocks the last few days so it must be time for me to delve into the geology of the Chathams. The cool thing about geology is that you get layers in rocks and you can read millions of years of history like a book...
Chatham Islands Warblers are modest little brown birds, with pointy beaks whose song sounds like a cheerful jig. Warblers don’t come when we clap our hands or call them and we can’t bribe them with worms to show us their nests...
Welcome to the Rangatira waterfront. This is where we all leapt off the boat that first day, and where we’ll leave the Island. The rocks are home to all sorts of wildlife including the shore plovers and skuas...
As it is a wet day here on Rangatira, one of my jobs this morning was to sort out the eggs that we have collected and pack them safely away. Black robin eggs are small and cream coloured with light brown speckles on them.
It’s the last day of the decade, and we’re spending it dodging rain showers and finding out the last bits of bird gossip to complete the endless soap opera that is the life of the Rangatira Island Black Robin population...
January 2010
Happy New Year! For the last week Brigitta has been in charge of GPS-ing the nests. This will give Melanie a map of the Island with dots on it showing exactly where all the nests are. This data will give Melanie yet another piece to help her solve the puzzle of the Island birds lives...
What a busy weekend. All the packing took a huge amount of time, we didn’t know until 8.30 on Sunday morning that we were going to leave on Sunday at lunchtime. When we spotted the boat coming around the corner of Pitt Island we knew that that really was it. We were headed for home...
A walk in the dark
It is very dark under the trees despite a full yellow moon, but quiet? No way! The sooty shearwaters yowl like cats, the storm petrels sound like yapping lapdogs and the penguins wheeze like ancient, emphysemic donkeys...
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Rangatira Diary
