Burrowscoping

Darren and Geoff with the burrowscope

It looks like one of those lame 'send in your caption' photo competitions, but really it's the lovely Darren and Geoff burrowscoping as part of Bluff Hill Motupohue Environment Trust's new Titi (sooty shearwater) monitoring programme. The burrowscope is a flexi bit of a vacuum cleaner tube with a video camera on one end which can swing left to right and is controlled by the thing Geoff is holding. The camera is connected to a screen above ground which Geoff and Darren are staring at to see where they need to direct the camera. Amazing.

The purpose of all this is to see how many Titi burrows have a chick in them and how many have no chick, but maybe some nesting material or fluffy down. This is a really exciting time, but one we have tried to keep fairly quiet about for fear that publicity could lead to more greedy idiots 'harvesting' the chicks. Bluff Hill is extremely lucky to have a tiny remnant population of these special seabirds which are legally protected on the mainland. Sure there are millions of Titi out there on the islands but only a few mainland colonies survive, this is due to predation by pests, including humans. Our hope is that through education and pest control the Titi colony will begin to thrive so that one day people will be able to come to Bluff Hill on dusk especially to see the Titi returning to their burrows to feed their chicks.

It bothers me that so much of New Zealand's native fauna is inaccessible to the general public, viewable only in fenced sanctuaries and cages or on remote islands. It doesn't have to be this way, hopefully through pest control, education and monitoring we can watch our frail little colony thrive and add to the rich biodiversity that can be easily experienced on Bluff Hill.