Seychelles is a group of small islands 1,500 km off the eastern coast of Africa, in the Indian Ocean. It is a luxury tourist destination, offering the romantic tropical island experience with sun-drenched beaches, palm trees, coral reefs, and top-class accommodation. To wildlife enthusiasts and conservationists, however, they are something much more: an example of successful habitat restoration and the recovery of bird populations that at one time seemed doomed to extinction. Seychelles include about 40 granite islands and more than 100 coral or sand islets.
The larger islands have hilly centers covered with montane forest and, not surprisingly, it is these islands that hold most of the endemic bird species. Indeed, Mahe, the largest island, is home to seven of them and one, the Seychelles Scops Owl, occurs nowhere else. This small reddish-brown owl was discovered in 1880 but declared extinct in 1958, having been recorded just once in the meantime, in 1940. Following up on reports of strange croaking calls being heard at night, however, it was rediscovered only a year later, when reports tentatively suggested the existence of 20 birds. It is now known, however, that there are about 360 birds, mostly found in the Morne Seychellois National Park, and it has now been intensively studied, the very first nest having been discovered in 2000.
This back-from-the-brink story is not the only one to feature among the birds of Seychelles. On the nearby island of Fregate, for example, the Seychelles Magpie-Robin has faced a more genuine struggle for survival. Its problems are common to many Seychelles birds, and to many species of birds on small islands generally. Once widespread on most of the major islands, this attractive black chat with a broad white wing-bar fell victim to a catalog of ills; foraging mainly on the ground, it was frequently preyed upon by introduced cats and its tree-hole nest was vulnerable to rats.
This, together with habitat destruction and degradation, eventually limited the magpie robin to just one 2.19-sq-km island, and by 1965 there were only 15 individuals remaining, perhaps making it the rarest bird in the world. Then the conservation agencies stepped in, yet their first attempts at helping the magpie-robin failed. Some birds were translocated to other islands but died out; cats were eradicated from Fregate in 1982, but still, the population hovered in the danger zone.
It was not until 1990, when the habitat on Fregate began to be managed especially for them, that the birds, at last, began to recover, reaching a total of 85 individuals by 1999. Birds were translocated to Aride, Cousin and Cousine islands and the present total from the four populations is well above 150 birds. In 2005, to richly deserved fanfare, Seychelles Magpie-Robin was downgraded from Critical status to Endangered by BirdLife International. Meanwhile, the island of Cousin was witnessing its own drama. At the same time that the magpie-robin was faltering on Fregate, Seychelles Warbler population declined to 29 individuals on Cousin, and it was in severe trouble. However, in 1968 Cousin Island came up for sale and became the first island in the world to be owned by an international conservation organization (the International Council for Bird Preservation, the forerunner of BirdLife International).
The island was promptly purged of its coconut palms and the original scrubby vegetation regenerated. The warbler recovered and its population is now over 2,000 individuals, including birds translocated to Aride and Cousine. Studies have shown that this species lays only one egg per clutch, exceptionally low for a member of its family. The next species that were expected to reach dangerously low populations was the Seychelles White-eye. Until recently it was thought to occur only in Mahe, wherein in 1996 there were thought to be only 35 individuals surviving, all dangerously vulnerable to cats and to nest-predation by rats, and introduced Common Mynas. With no hope of eradicating these threats on such a comparatively large (30 km long) island, things looked bleak until, miraculously, a previously unknown, thriving population of more than 250 was discovered in 1997 on the predator-free islet of Conception.
For once, the bird managed its own recovery. The other Seychelles endemics have spared the conservationists too much trauma, but several are vulnerable to catastrophic events. Magnificent Seychelles Paradise Flycatcher, for example, the male of which is entirely sooty black with a long trailing tail, occurs only on the island of La Digue, where its population numbers about 230 birds. The gecko-eating Seychelles Kestrel numbers about 450 birds, mostly on Mahe, while the Seychelles Swiftlet has a larger population, but many of its breeding caves are still to be discovered. Happily, the Seychelles Blue Pigeon, the Seychelles Bulbul, and the Seychelles Fody are all secure, and the Seychelles Sunbird seems to have positively benefited from man’s alteration of the local environment. It can be seen everywhere. Thus it is that a birder visiting Seychelles can still see a good range of endemic birds.
The other main attraction is the seabirds and the island of Aride has some of the most important colonies in the Indian Ocean, totaling about one million birds of ten species. There are up to 360,000 pairs of Sooty Terns, 200,000 pairs of Sooty Noddies (Seychelles has all the world’s largest colonies of this bird), and 72,000 Audubon’s Shearwaters. Bird Island, an isolated speck 100 km north of Mahe, may hold a million Sooty Terns in the breeding season, of which up to 600,000 pairs may actually be nesting.
This island also provides a habitat for 10,000 Brown Noddies and several other species of tern. Meanwhile, the population of the exotic-looking White Tern, with its snowy plumage and large dark eye, numbers about 14,000 pairs throughout all the islands. Famously, it lays its single egg precariously on a fork in a branch from where, on occasion, it may be deliberately tipped by a badly behaved Seychelles Fody. These two last-named sums up Seychelles quite well, bird-wise. The fabulous White Tern adorns the tourism brochures, but it is birds like the fody that provide lasting and uplifting memories of the Seychelles.
KEY SPECIES Eleven endemic land birds including Seychelles Magpie-Robin and Seychelles Paradise Flycatcher, and a host of tropical seabirds including White Tern. TIME OF YEAR July to October is best when the seabirds are breeding.
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