You gotta feel sorry for the poor little wirebird - it is the last of the endemic landbirds on St Helena (the other 5 are now extinct) and as a result of cat predation and loss of breeding habitat its numbers have halved in the past decade until only around 150 pairs remain. All this and there was until recently only one, very busy - and dedicated, person in charge of their welfare. Luckily the UK's RSPB have supported wirebird conservation on St Helena for quite a while, and as a result two new programmes have just started - both seeking to control wild cats in some of the areas that are used for nesting. Now a team of three has joined Eddie Duff, the single Wirebird Officer, and they're busy putting out cat traps (well, they will, when they've talked to all the neighbors to make sure they don't trap any pet cats), monitoring rat and cat numbers, and putting cameras on nests to see what happens to the eggs. I was lucky enough to sneak away for an hour with the team (which rapidly turned into 4 hours) as I was given a whirlwind tour of such famous wirebird sites as Deadwood, Mulberry Gut, Horse Point and Bradley's Garage. Eddy proved the consummate tour guide (as always) and even had one bird trained to voice commands (or so it seemed).
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| The St Helena wirebird standing over the scrape in the ground which is its nest |
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| Wirebird at a nest being monitored by a small video camera which will record the fate of the two eggs |
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| Eddy and his powers of wirebird persuasion |
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| so dang cute! |
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| not cute! The wirebird team (from left) Kevin George, Eddy Duff, Denis Leo |
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