The other side of Aride Island

With the arrival of a night time predator to the island recently, we have been experiencing the other side of Aride – the hill at night. It is unfortunate that the reason is due to the predation of roseate terns by barn owl, but venturing up the hill under the cover of darkness is an experience that is mind blowing. The whole island becomes alive with a completely different set of wildlife to that we experience during the day on the plateau.
Anyone who has chance to visit Aride will leave with the impression that it is literally alive with wildlife. The day time is full of tok toks bouncing from branch to branch, sunbirds nosily chattering in the trees, magpie robins foraging under leaves, lesser and brown noddys ducking and diving in the breeze, tropic and frigate birds soaring on the thermals, whilst fairy terns flutter above your head and crabs and skinks scurry under your feet, often so plentiful it is hard to take a step without fear of squashing them. But at the night it is a different Aride, a walk up the hill is a full sensory overload of a special kind, the sights, sounds and smells are like nothing I have ever experienced. The sounds alone are beyond belief, as the wedgetail shearwaters wale like babies from their burrows and the Audubon shearwaters hurtle past with their wheezing, puffin-like cries, so close you can feel the air movement from their wings on your face. Then there is the bark of the sooty terns as they defend their nests or small chicks which huddle beneath for warmth in the cool night. The quiet pip of the small fluffy youngsters can be heard out of the darkness, a torch trained on the ground essential for the worry of stepping too close.

But it is the large millipede that means every step has to be measured, as the ground is littered with them. Over 6 inches in length, they resemble a prop from a science fiction movie, everywhere you look they glisten in the torch light, as their many legs scale the trees and rocks and carry them slowly along the path.
The shearwaters too leave their burrows and take to the clear ground of the path; many pairs of wedgetails can be seen sitting together like elderly couples, but soon to scurry off at the first sign of light, their short legs doing well to negotiate the uneven terrain, as they skulk once more into the darkness. The Audubons by contrast will remain, sometimes head tucked under wing asleep, or just starting to wake, then to get entangled in your feet as you try to creep quietly by.

Wearing a head torch can sometimes be a little disconcerting, the light may often attract unwanted attention, shearwaters will come careering into your face, lesser noddys and sooty terns startled by the light will flutter in front like bats, drawn helplessly to the brightness. The fairy terns remain undisturbed as they watch us as intruders into their night time world, their all white plumage lighting up as the beam of the torch flashes in front.

The scent of the night flowering cucumber drifts across the path as it opens its dusky yellow flowers into the darkness and the wonderful sweet smell fills the air. This rare flower unique to Aride carpets the ground in some areas and uses the trees to clamber and climb in others.

As we complete our mission and finish our decent we are greeted by the roar of the sea which echoes out of the darkness. The waves crash against the rocks, throwing the smell and taste of the

Breeding Seabird Census

Although the breeding seabird survey is most definitely one of the most physically demanding sides of the job here, it is also one of the most satisfying once it is completed. It is the time when almost every inch of the island is visited to count the breeding seabirds, well that is not exactly true, it just feels like it.

The island has a grid system which is a 50m x 50m grid marked out on the ground, by tape on trees and these points are used to locate plots which are counted. We count five species, brown and lesser noddy, sooty and fairy tern and white-tailed tropic bird.

Ideally we are a team of five people, each taking a species, but more often than not it is less, this year we were a team of four, so it slowed us up a little. The timing of the survey is crucial and has to be completed once all the sooty terns have laid, but before any of them have hatched. Once there are young chicks about disturbing the nests will most likely result in death of the chicks, as they panic and leave their nests running into other territories to be then instantly killed by other adults birds.

With the survey come many challenges; such as having the physical fitness to be able to stick it and see it through, the survey can take between 6 to 8 days dawn until dusk and the terrain is tough, sheer rocks and steep slopes. Having the right temperament and patience in the team to keep it together and deal with tough situations, especially when people are tired, hot and hungry, and become ratty. Having the navigational skills and always trusting your compass when a grid marker becomes elusive, but knowing it has to found and your legs hurt so much that you really don’t relish the prospect of going down the hill to find it, knowing you have got to climb back up again.
There are always highs and lows of the survey, this will be the second one I have completed and both were very different. But the lows in both years were seeing the evidence of poaching, empty sacks and buckets, blood on rocks from birds being killed, smashed eggs, and plots that are deathly quiet as all the birds and their eggs have been taken. Or seeing the effects of Pisonia, the sticky seeds that stick a bird together and make it flightless, the hill claims many casualties and dead carcasses litter the woodland floor.

But then the highs are walking into a plot which is full of sooty terns when there were so many birds the noise is just intense, they all take to the air and fly above your head and it is impossible to hear each other speak.

This year we had a survey point in one corner of an area like this and it wasn't even in the middle, however over the 300m² area that our survey plot covers we recorded 308 sooty terns, so that was more than 1 per m². There was a similar area just south, which was more under the canopy of the woodland and there were 309 in that area. Just to walk in amongst them is such as experience, some birds just sit there looking at you quietly, others squawk like mad and vigorously peck at your feet, whilst the majority just take to the air and gibve off their penetrating‘wide-awake’ call.

The lesser noddys are a real feature too, it is so apparent that they have no concept of human interference at all. Some of the nests are lower than head height, the same as for the fairy terns, you are at eye level with the bird and lower when you look into the nest. But it isn't just one it is many, it just makes me smile when they look back at you with the glazed expression that most of them have when they are incubating and that look as if you haven't seen them and if they keep still then you won't see them.

But it is not just the wildlife, you get to go to areas on the island that you have never been and the views and scenery is out of this world, sheer cliffs that look down to the crystal clear water below and you look on top of the birds you are surveying. On our last day I wrote in my diary:

“We climbed up to the eastern rocks on the southern side in the morning; it was breath taking, right up there with the sooty terns, the view down in to the water and along the beach and back over the hill behind us was stunning. As I looked across the trees behind me it felt a real sense of achievement that we had completed a 50m x 50m grid survey of the island, no mean task. I could have sat at this point for many minutes, but knew it would only be as long as the survey took, which was predominately a survey of brown noddys and of course sooty terns. Before too long people shouted their figures to me and the deed was done and we headed back to the shade of the canopy.”

There will be many memorable aspects of my stay on Aride, some good and of course others not so good, but the breeding bird survey will be there in the good, if fact dam good.
Hmmm but that might well be influenced by knowing that I haven’t got to do a third – don’t think the old knees would cope with it!!

Thanks John (our volunteer) for the photos - which explains why there isn't any of you!