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.