Our man (Andy Schofield) writes:-
Adams’ Rock.
Today I was lucky, the Pitcairner’s had offered me a fishing trip out on one of their longboats. I love to fish, ever since I was “knee high to a grasshopper” it’s been one of my favourite things to do, but this was an opportunity to survey all the cliffs of Pitcairn in one go as they had promised to circumnavigate the island throughout the day. Our first stop was just outside Bounty Bay and only a stone’s throw from the shore is Adams’ Rock.
It’s not a big rock, although bare and volcanic it does feel a little foreboding when you get close to it. It has a single coconut palm that clings to the side of it and only just dares to peek its crown above the highest point to gain as much shelter from the wind as it can. I wish I knew the story of how that single coconut ever got there in the first place but it just shows how resilient nature can be!
Adams rock is the only place on Pitcairn so far that I have managed to find Brown Noddy’s attempting to breed but the highlight for me was the small colony of Masked Booby’s, I love “our Gannets” back home, I could watch and draw them for hours. Only about 6-10 pairs were precariously perched just close enough to each other that they could remind their neighbour with a quick peck that they were still there!
A pair of Masked Booby’s (Henderson Island, Sue O’Keefe)
The Northern tip of Pitcairn Island.
The North-western end of Pitcairn Island is fairly inaccessible and was somewhere I really wanted to go, the fact that somewhere on an island only 2 miles by 1 mile is inaccessible intrigued me anyway but this was where most of the historical seabird records originate from. One place in particular is a location called Ginger Valley (on the right hand side of the picture above). I asked some of the locals how to get there, to which Nola and Royal, two of the older ladies I frequently bump into, quickly snapped “you’ll either keep the doctor busy or you’ll be a dead man if you go to Ginger Valley”! (I may have to rethink my strategy.) The boat was a great place to get some fantastic views of some of the seabirds that, as far as I know so far, don’t breed on Pitcairn including Herald Petrel, Greater Frigatebirds, White Tailed Tropicbird and Blue Footed Booby’s, and their feet really are bright blue!
It was a very successful day and I must thank all the islanders of Pitcairn for the opportunity to be invited out on such a great community fishing day, oh, and I even caught one or two fish for my tea too!
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!