News
News Eastbourne Forest Rangers (EFR) Little Penguin (Korora) Fluttering Shearwater Volunteers - Two Events In One! Nature Connection Videos End of Translocation Stage Pub Crawling Chick Fond Farewells The Big Clean-Up Be In To Win Video of Fluttering Shearwater Chick Exercising!! Visits to Makaro and Mokopuna Islands A Perfect Rainbow!! WOW, what a night!!! - December 2015 The chick has fledged - January 2016 Mutton birds on Matiu/Somes Island Gull Banding 2015 – 2016 Visit to Makaro Island – November 2016 Diving Petrel on Matiu/Somes Island 2016/17 fluttering shearwater breeding season ends
A three-year project to translocate 237 fluttering shearwater chicks from Long Island in the Marlborough Sounds to Matiu/Somes Island in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington Harbour) was successfully completed in 2014.
The programme is now in a long-term monitoring phase and is already showing positive signs of a very promising outcome:
- Several of the adult birds regularly seen foraging in the harbour have been found in nest boxes on Matiu/Somes Island.
- A pair of these visitors set up ‘home’ on Matiu/Somes during 2014 and produced the first chick hatched on the island in a very long time.
- An even greater news item was the discovery during 2014 that four of the chicks from the first batch translocated in 2012 had returned to Matiu/Somes Island:
We will keep you informed on the build-up of the colony via regular progress reports on discoveries during the monitoring activities.