Te Papa vertebrates curator Colin Miskelly recently spent 3 days on Mana Island following a conservation dog searching for well-concealed petrels in the lush vegetation. He kindly agreed to share a ‘blog with a dog’ with us.
Miro is a 4-year-old German short-haired pointer cross. He is one of the few conservation dogs in the country that has been certified to search for protected seabirds. With his handler Joanna Sim, he spends much of his work time searching for kororā | little penguins as part of construction mitigation works, including along Te Ara Tupua (Nga Ūranga to Pito-One pathway) here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Both Miro and Joanna jumped at the chance to work with a range of other seabird species, and on a project where the target birds could be extracted from their burrows and handled (for measuring and banding). For most of their recent mitigation work, and other general surveys, the birds were left undisturbed inside their burrows, which meant that Miro’s (and probably Joanna’s!) motivation waned after a long, hot day in the field.
Mana Island seabird restoration
Mana Island, west of Wellington, is the site of one of the world’s most complex seabird restoration projects. Between 1997 and 2021, a total of 1152 chicks of four petrel species were translocated to the island, and hand-fed until they were fully-feathered and ready to depart to sea. At least 992 of these translocated chicks are thought to have fledged, and many of them returned to Mana Island as adults one to eight years later. Three of the species now have well-established colonies on Mana Island, though the colonies remain small (but growing).
Common diving petrels | kuaka have spread along much of the western coastline of Mana Island. However, until the recent survey, almost all fairy prion | tītī wainui and fluttering shearwater | pakahā nests found on Mana Island were in artificial burrows. Was this because the birds really liked the homes that we had made for them, or was this just the easiest place to find them? We have long suspected that there are ‘wild breeders’ out there that have dug their own breeding burrows and are quietly doing the wild thing away from public gaze.
Conservation dogs and seabirds
Trained conservation dogs have been widely used to find burrow-nesting seabirds throughout Aotearoa. In addition to their kororā work, Joanna and Miro have worked on black petrel | tākoketai and Cook’s petrel | tītī on Aotea / Great Barrier Island, and on grey-faced petrel | ōi near Tāmaki Makaurau. They were an ideal pair to help find AWOL petrels on Mana Island.
Petrels as a group have a musty smell that carries a long way on a gentle breeze – and that is rapidly dispersed in a howling Wellington northerly gale. We had challenging weather conditions during our time on Mana Island – and it wasn’t just the swirling wind that made it tough for Miro.
Odour to the max
About a hundred pairs of (naturally occurring) sooty shearwaters | tītī breed near and among the kuaka, tītī wainui, and pakahā that have returned to breed on Mana Island. At one site, all four species breed in close proximity, and we found three species together at several other sites. We took an interest in all four species, and it took Miro a while to figure out that it was tītī wainui and pakahā that we got most excited about. And then he had to negotiate a curve ball with a kororā that had climbed all the way up to the main pakahā colony…
Once he had the priority search image (odour IDs) figured out, Joanna was able to tell when Miro had found one of our main target species, rather than ‘just another’ kuaka or tītī. He eventually found four pakahā chicks well away from where we knew them to be breeding. However, the only tītī wainui that he found were nests that we already knew about.
With many thanks to Friends of Mana Island for funding the survey, Department of Conservation for logistic support and permission to undertake the survey, and of course to Joanna and Miro for their amazing ability to sniff out petrels.
Related blogs
- One step forward after three steps back – slow progress with restoring populations of New Zealand seabirds
- A box of fluffy birds – moving fairy prions from Takapourewa / Stephens Island to Mana Island | Te Papa’s Blog
- A box of fluffy birds – the sequel. Fairy prion chicks fly from Mana Island
- From farm to forest – the transformation of Mana Island
- Surveying snipe on Putauhinu Island
What an intriguing approach to conservation, how effective has this method been in protecting seabird populations on Mana Island? Regards PTS Terbaik
Thanks very much, that was very interesting.