One of the rarest forms of therapy – the Seychelles Magpie Robin

When you read the title you would be forgiven if you thought ‘that’s a little sad’, or ‘she’s finally gone mad, the isolation has got to her’ – but hear me out.

When the local school children, or my nephew and niece - Sam and Lucy ask; ‘What’s your favourite bird then?’ - My answer nowadays is always the Seychelles magpie robin. Why? Well they are not just special because they are one the rarest birds in the world at a population of 160 and endemic to the Seychelles, but they are cute, intelligent and smart.

I remember reading an article many years ago in the RSPB’s magazine, Birds, about the work that was being done to address the declining population of just 21 birds in 1990, little did I know that I would ever be working and living with them. They are now present on 4 Seychelles’ islands and Aride is one of them and we can boast of having a total 23 birds – with one on the way. First successfully introduced to Aride in 1999, they stayed at a population of 15 for many years but over the last 12 months have gradually started to increase.

Many of you won’t know what a magpie robin looks like, well as the name suggests they are a cross between a large robin and a small magpie. They have the behaviour, stance and movement of a robin, and the colours, cheekiness and brains of a magpie. Altogether they are a pretty stunning little bird, about the size of a blackbird.

So how do they help me keep my sanity?
Living on Aride gives you the fantastic but rare opportunity to get to know birds and other wildlife individually, now with magpie robins this is made even easier, as to track the population each magpie robin has a different ring colour combination on their left leg, so we know who is who and who is doing what with or to who!!

Much like the robins in the gardens of the UK which will be on the end of your spade, magpie robins too are opportunistic and hang around people for the chance of a snack, either in the form of a cockroach or a piece of biscuit. As a result they become part of the fixtures and fittings at home and there is hardly a time in daylight hours that there isn’t one hopping round the veranda or kitchen behind you.

But they are smart, the sticky Pisonia seeds have killed many a bird on Aride, but magpie robins have got it sussed, what ever it takes they pull out all the feathers necessary to remove the sticky seeds, at times I‘m not sure how they manage this but we have seen it on numerous occasions.

They are very territorial birds and tend to hang around in gangs and if a bird ventures into another territory it will cause a coming together of the gangs from either side. The calling together of the gang is done with a penetrating alarm call to which all birds in the vicinity respond and fly to where the action is. They have a range of vocabulary, of course a full song which can be heard as you walk around the plateau, but particularly after a period of rain, and then a sub-song, which is one of the most amazing sounds ever. The sub-song seems to be a sign of contentedness, sung from the throat without opening their beak, it is a fluty warble which has little pattern or predictability, it is beautiful and often very timely as if they can sense the moment.

Well neither of us like giving names to wild animals and loathe these TV programmes that do so, but I’m afraid it has just kinda happened, rather than being known by their colours, the new recruits to the Aride magpie robin family have been christened. In our time here there have been 3 new recruits that have survived through to fledging – Squeaker, Ziarrah and Charlie, the latter of which is still at the age that Squeaker was when he got christened and so still a noisy little blighter. Ziarrah called after the daughter of the head ranger and Charlie christened such as he shares a birthday with another Charlie. The danger of this is that the blood test identifying the sex of each bird is always delayed and so after several months we may well find that Ziarrah isn’t the little girlie we thought she was.

Magpie robins when in a hurry move a little like Labrador dogs, with a sideways gate, instead of hopping or running they tend to have a bit of a limp and one leading leg, the concrete floors pose a challenge to this and many a robin has learnt to do the splits on our veranda floor in the rush for a piece of cheese. On the subject of food, they will eat anything, from spicy pumpkin soup to rice pudding and if you’re not too careful they will have a good go before you do. That is rule number one here regarding all wildlife, never leave food unattended for a second. Then there was a time when we thought we could throw away our mousetraps, the day that Squeaker caught a house mouse.

One downside is that they do pooh everywhere, but then so does everything else, but Ziarrah is particularly good at strategic poohing, not sure if it is out of excitement, or appreciation, but she will always leave a little message in most places, chairs, tables, worktops, the water filter – not fussy.

So... that’s how – and that’s why they’re my favourite.

The Hulla Bulla Shouting Man

“What dya want to do today Sal” (Sat day off)
“Let’s catch some fish for dinner”
“Great I’ll sort the boat”
We set off in the small fibreglass with the 25hp engine, we just got to the east of the island and there, 20ft from the cliffs was an octopus boat (that’s not a boat shaped like an octopus or a boat driven by an octopus, it’s a boat with people catching octopuses). It should have been 200m off our shore, but what’s a couple of hundred meters between friends. So me and Sal confidently take our boat close to theirs and say, in a friendly manner you’re much too close. Well, the 2 people in the boat said “huh” looked away from us and carried on fishing and the chap in the water chucked another couple of octopuses in their boat. Sal, in sensed by their lack of respect for the warden of Aride said “right” got out her camera and took their photo. Bad move. I was amazed at how quick belligerence can turn to aggression.

The one who looked in charged started shouting (in Creole) and I’m now slightly worried. They pull the other chap into the boat and come towards us, luckily I never switched off the engine and I kept our distance, the shouting man was really shouting now and getting closer. If they get to close and throw their anchor into our boat we’re knackered. Now we’re starting to shit ourselves. So as always the discretion and valour old bollocks comes into play and we leg it!

They gave chase. Both boats had 25hp engines but we were lighter, 2 of us to 3 of them and a ton of octopuses so they couldn’t make up any ground on us, it was who had the most fuel or determination. We kept circling the island with them 500m behind, luckily the rangers saw that was happening and launched our tornado with 5 staff. They stopped, and we used the tornado as a shield and let the shouting man catch us up, he was not a happy bunny, as we pirouetted around the tornado he was shouting his head off and our rangers were desperately trying to calm him down. After quite some time he either got a sore throat or got fed up and just left.
Well, I thought I did bloody well to keep the distance between the two of us, with them weaned on the water and me all of 3hrs experience, I still got a smack on the head for letting them “get to bloody close”.
This was a few months ago, and I’ve seen shouting man several times fishing legitimately since then, I always get the same reaction form him, arm out straight finger pointing and the shouting “hulla bulla hulla bulla” of course it’s not hulla bulla but that’s what it sounds like. I’ve never bothered to get it translated, because I know it’s bound to be about my parentage and what he’s going to do to certain parts of my body.
Last week on a shopping trip to Praslin we came out of a shop and there was shouting man across the other side of the track. I quickly went through all the permutations in my head, i.e. should we turn around and pretend not to have seen him, buy him a beer, smack him over the head with the shopping bag. I thought no you b_____d your going to talk to me! so I put on my friendliest smile, walked over to him, put my face right in his, stuck out my hand and said “how’s the fishing buddy”. I defiantly caught him off guard, what could he do, I had the big smile and the hand out stretched so he had to take it, he did, and said “yaa fishing gud” He seemed to find it all very amusing( to my relief ) and after he shook hands with me and Sal, he left, phew.
When I see shouting man next time fishing, if he still is shouting man, my tactic will be to moon at him, or perhaps we’ve pushed are luck too far with him already, we’ll see.

One lump or two?

After working with the school children before we came out and their main concern being me having to live without chocolate whilst I was away, together with all the stories we were told before we came out here; I can remember thinking as we prepared to leave, I wonder where we will get sugar from in our diet, no more chocolate or sugary drinks. Trish the Ham Wall Administrator and I talked about this during one of our tea breaks as we each devoured a Danish pastry, and we decided that it would be from natural sugars – from fruit etc, hmmm, at the time I remember thinking that won’t be very exciting...

Over the last 8 months we have both noticed that due to our change of diet, we don’t get sugar as we suspected, we don’t eat processed food or sauces, or bought biscuits or snacks – as most of the time there aren’t any in the shops, or we don’t get to the shops to buy them. As well as this, the big source of sugar we used to have was in alcohol and now we are down to one bottle of beer a night that has dried up too. Well there are the natural sources of sugar, but they aren’t very exciting and we have found that we crave for sweet things, having never been pudding people before we now crave for cake and custard!
When we first got here we did buy biscuits when they were available, but going back to one of my earlier entries, they were never what they said they would be, pineapple crunch biscuits would taste like wet cardboard and imitation bourbon creams would be cardboard – they were atrocious.
Well I am glad this effected Melv more than it did me – the reduction of alcohol made him, loose weight dramatically, but not only that, it has inspired him to start making cakes!

Anyone who knows us will know that Melv is the cook in the partnership, and Sal is only allowed in the kitchen to clear up. Sal cooked Melv a meal shortly after they first got together 13 years ago, and it was so good he has never let her cook again!!
First started by one of the volunteers here, Melv has progressed from biscuits to muesli bars to pineapple upside down cake and they are all fabulous.

One of the latest inventions are coconut mountains, which are dependent on jam being available, but are now well known even in the Mahe office and have been a welcome addition to a cup of tea for many a visitor to Aride.

So much for thinking I was going to lose weight whilst I was here...
Ps – I’ll get Melv to write up the recipe.

Poaching

The Seychelles is no different than most places around the world wildlife wise; it’s knackered; basically where there’s people there’s no wildlife, similar sad familiar story we know so well from the UK. The reason it’s gone of course is us, with our rats, cats, chemicals and chainsaws, again just like home. Where it differs from the UK is that the Seychellois eat everything! With the excuse of tradition they eat the birds, birds’ eggs and if they miss the eggs the first time round they come back and eat the young. So with no birds left on inhabited islands, to serve tradition they come and poach on our nature reserve. The main bird they are after is the sooty tern, which arrives in it’s thousands during May to Aride to breed, they cover the higher areas of the island in dense colonies. Of course we were aware of this problem before we arrived, but we were pleasantly surprised by the outgoing warden who told us “don’t worry about it it’s not much of a problem”. Well we still don’t know to this day why he said that as we later found out he couldn’t have been further away from telling the truth if he’d tried. A few weeks later the good Seychellois staff told us a much different story, they said “it’s a commercial operation here”. So we decided to spend as much time as needed to assess the problem for ourselves.
The poachers are more active during dark, but not exclusively, so we set up watches on the beach from dawn till dusk to look for boats with more than 2 people in them (normally only 1-2 people fish in a boat) and at dusk we went in pairs to the colonies on the hill. The intention was firstly to deter the poachers by letting them know we could see them, then ring in their details to the only good bloke here re anti poaching, he would then contact the police (they deserve a blog entry all to themselves, but not while I’m still here!) so they could catch them as they got back to the mainland. Armed with a massively powerful torch and a machete, me and Sal took our first shift on the hill, at 140m high the cliff where we watched the sea - it is just stunning, sat here with 1000s of sooty terns flying right above our heads the noise was indescribable.

As the sun set the first poachers arrived, as they came to land I shone the torch at them, the torch was telling them you’ve been seen and you will get in trouble if you land, what they said to the torch was f—k you and landed anyway. These are serious people who can’t be messed with, so we legged it, with only one escape route we left in quite a hurry because of the real risk they would get around the back of us and cut us off. With the other observation points faring no better, the total amount of poachers on the island on that first night was 9 confirmed, with the certainty there where a lot more unseen. The next night we did the same, in the same place, this time, no birds no eggs just a few they had broken and no noise, all gone! What they do is strip an area clean, load the eggs into containers, so not to break the eggs they pack the containers with dead sooty terns, and if it’s just eggs they want, they break them into jerry cans so they can sell it by the litre. Well as you can imagine we were shocked and piss off, and any of you reading this who knows us will know we wouldn’t be quiet. We rang the good chap every night with what ever details we could get re boats and it’s occupants, but no arrests, which we were not at all surprised about, as we rang in more and more instances of poaching, the good chap (who has a lot of clout here) said it was getting to dangerous for us to deal with by ourselves, he was going to send in the armed police. Just to fill you in a bit, the armed police in the Seychelles, like their jobs and they shoot people.

Our CEO (Sal’s line manager), rang the director of police and asked what they intended to do, and she was told “ if there’s people on the island that shouldn’t be, they will be shot!” Shit! that sent us into a panic, don’t get me wrong, I would like all the b_____ds shot and wouldn’t lose one moments sleep no matter how many they killed. But the reality if that were to happen, would be an unthinkable back lash from the relatives and friends of the shot poachers, we, that’s all the staff would not be safe anywhere either on or off the island. Thankfully, strangely, because all Seychellois eat wild birds and eggs the chief of police thought it would be too contentious an operation with political ramifications and put a stop to it.
At the end of the poaching season 65% of our sooty terns’ eggs were taken, with that and a month of 15hr a day 7 day a week fatigue, put me into my first big sulk here, I could have caught the next flight home and said f—k it. Thankfully it only lasted a week or so.

Just pop down the shop for a pint of milk...

It has been by far the busiest time here recently, with the breeding seabird season, which brings with it the poaching and the seabird census. The 70ha of Aride have felt like 700ha, as we have tried to get a grip on the number of eggs that have been taken and then count all those that have been left or relayed. After recently completing the poaching report, I can now give you an idea of the scale of the issue, which is certainly food for thought and not for the light hearted. Here on the island the sooty terns nest on approximately 30ha, which over the last 5 years has held an average population of 105,000 nesting pairs. This season 18ha of those 30 were poached, which working it out on a birds per hectare calculation comes to a total of approx 63,000 eggs that could’ve been taken and ended up on people’s plates. I couldn’t believe it when I heard some of the stories that our head ranger had to tell, particularly the one of the poachers bringing jerry cans across and breaking the eggs into them and taking then back as a liquid to sell – so people can make scramble eggs and omelettes. Then also the one about taking the live birds, they fill a sack with a mix of eggs and live birds and the birds help stop the eggs from being broken. It is a real shock to think this still goes on and on a commercial scale too – in the last 10 years the sooty tern population on Aride has decline by 50,000 pairs – although some of this can be attributed to habitat development and change, it makes you think after witnessing what we have, that poaching has a significant part to play.
Anyway that is enough of a rant, it is just hard to accept that conservation over here is in a completely different world to in the UK.
The seabird census has now been completed a week and my knees have just about recovered, it was the hardest conservation task I have ever done and by far out did reed cutting on the exhaustion front - which is saying something. The island is marked out with a 50m grid which is used to census the millions of birds we have here and each year we survey every other point which can amount to 125. The location of the point can only be found by taking a compass bearing and even then it is sometimes impossible. Well my rock climbing skills from my Berry Head days came in handy and there were many times I thought – if my mum could see me now...
It was good thing that Melv opted out, it was not a job for those that don’t like heights. In order to follow the compass bearing you are unable to deviate from the route indicated by the compass, so sheer rock faces, steep slopes, thick ferns full of ticks and slippery rocks all had to be negotiated. By day 5 of dawn till dusk I was hanging, no training could’ve prepared me for this – it made Langport Triathlon feel easy! Must add though as the oldest one there by far I was glad to see even the youngsters felt the same – even the locals!
What I was starting off too say was that whilst all this has been going on we have experienced a change in the seasons, from the North West monsoon to the South East. The south east has brought strong winds and rough seas and the quiet, calm days of the earlier part of the year have left us. It is hard to find out if the weather we are experiencing is the norm for here – locals don’t seem to notice such things – which does seem a little odd coming from the UK, where we are all obsessed by it. A typical morning is currently part cloudy skies, a cool breeze and in fact a very autumnal feel. All the leaves on the trees are starting to fall and the island is looking a little tired. The main consequence of the SE monsoon for both the vegetation and its inhabitants is the salt spray. As the waves come crashing onto the beach the spray is carried by the brisk SE wind and distributed across the island. The leaves of many of the trees have a low tolerance to it and fall to the ground and the effect on everything else is that it gets covered by a slimy, greasy film. And I mean everything else, this ranges from the bed clothes to the cooker, as far as possible everything we can are put in sealable plastic bags, from the mobile phone to the alarm clock, but this doesn’t work for all – like the laptop and the ukulele! I don’t know how it does it but the slime even gets into the cupboards and puts a coat on the books, fishing gear and food, you name it Mr Slime has been there.
This time of year means that we don’t get to leave the island much , the rough sea makes boat launching a challenge, this together with low levels of fuel means we restrict boat journeys to once a week and then only for a few people. All our endeavours in the garden are now really coming to fruition as Melv’s green fingers have got a full range of fresh vegetable starting to grow, this together with a well stocked food cupboard (a mouse proof one at that), fishing when ever the boat is out and creative cooking is the key to life on Aride for the next few months – it’s a good way to live and self sufficiency taken to the extreme. – Must admit though I’m glad Melv is the cook – bit too challenging for Sal!!