Our man (Andy Scholfield) writes:
Today was an important day; I would take my Pitcairn Island driving test! This would enable me and all my kit to get round the island much easier. Yes, I was nervous. Brenda from the Pitcairn Police and Immigration would take me for my test around the island. Although there are no cars on Pitcairn the islanders use quad bikes as their primary mode of getting from A to B. I already have both a driving licence and a quad bike (4x4 ATV) certificate so I was hoping it would be a formality.
My Pitcairn driving licence
Thankfully I passed and saved my embarrassment for another day. Brenda even complemented me on my driving skills, although I’m not sure if she meant it or was being polite. This will enable me to get around the Island surveying much easier and save so much time not having to walk with a rucksack and 16 foot bamboo poles to opposite ends of the Island allowing me much more time “in the field”.
The rest of the day was spent doing exactly that “in the field” surveying Pitcairn’s breeding seabird species. This sounds easy enough but it is quite difficult on a Pacific tropical island such as Pitcairn as many of the birds don’t have specific breeding seasons as such with some birds having quite large almost fledged.
The trees are alive with Noddy’s
The commonest species present are Fairy Terns, Black Noddy’s and Red Tailed Tropicbirds with their majestically long fine tail plumes that were once highly sought after by Polynesians as they formed a major part of the village elders headdresses.
Another tremendous sight was finding a small colony, c 15 pairs, of Blue Noddy, which was a bird I have always wanted to see but didn’t think that they occurred never mind nested on Pitcairn. They are quite shy as Noddy’s go, nesting high up in old lava holes in the volcanic cliffs. They are quite small and often feed far out to sea specialising in catching
Brown Booby at Tedside rocks
very small fish and returning to their cliff ledges late in the afternoon and early evening, they actually reminded me of Choughs in the way that they used the updrafts around the cliff faces and then would tumble like bits of tissue paper before confidently rising up again on the currents as they tried to get the perfect positioning for dropping in to their tiny cave entrances.
The highlight of the day though was once I had returned home. I was sitting on the back steps of the house I was staying in and I heard a bird calling that sounded almost like a distant peregrine! I couldn’t make out where it was coming from other than somewhere around the large volcanic cliff I had been watching the Blue Noddy’s on earlier.
Eventually something caught my eye, two birds flying in a mirror image of each other, calling around the stone buttress peak at the top of Christians Cave cliff. I recognised them from my voyage on the Claymore II but was more familiar with them gliding effortlessly through the wave troughs not high up above the ridge. They were Kermadec Petrels! I couldn’t contain my excitement; I didn’t think that any of the Petrel species still bred on Pitcairn not least Kermadecs. I started to doubt what I had seen. There’s only one thing for it I thought. I know where I am going on my next available evening!
We've been working with the UK's amazing Overseas Territories for almost 20 years, but are still only scratching the surface of understanding their wonderful wildlife. One of the most remote and little known Territory environments is found in the Pitcairn Islands, the last remaining British Territory in the Pacific. Home to the extremely friendly descendants of the Mutiny on the Bounty, the Territory is made up of one inhabited island (Pitcairn) and three uninhabited ones.
We have a longstanding programme underway to restore one of these off-islands (Henderson Island World Heritage Site), but were conscious that the environment of Pitcairn itself is in many ways less studied than that of its uninhabited neighbours. Staff members have spent ten days on Pitcairn in consultation with the local community in 2010 and 2012, but as far as we are aware almost no general terrestrial conservationists have spent more than a week or two on the island. No one therefore really has any idea how big or threatened the population of the unique local bird, the Pitcairn reed-warbler, is, several of the island's unique plant species may be down to just a few individuals, and what invertebrate species exist on this fertile volcanic pinnacle is an almost untouched world still awaiting exploration and discovery.
We've therefore sent our new Overseas Territories Officer, Andy Schofield, to Pitcairn for three months to work alongside the Pitcairners and try to answer some of these questions. We're very excited to see what he may find!