These photos of wild Echo Parakeets were all taken in Mauritius in February 2009, and were taken at a field station in Black River Gorges National Park in Mauritius on a visit there organised by Lone Raffray of the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.

The field station is still critically important in keeping the Echos alive. Very little of Mauritius’ native forest remained by the late twentieth century, and much of that was degraded as a result of past forestry practices and by the invasion of exotic plants - primarily guava Psidium cattleianum, privet Ligustrum robustum and jamrosa Syzygium jambos. As the Echos nested in cavities in emergent endemic trees and had always fed on the fruit, flowers, leaves, buds and bark of a wide range of native species, foraging widely and targeting different plant species at different times of the year, this was - inevitably - disastrous. By 1986 the population was estimated to be between 8 and 12 individuals, though Thorsen et al. (writing in 1997 in an unpublished report to the UNDP, World Parrot Trust, Durrell Wildlife Preservation Trust and Mauritian Wildlife Foundation) believed that due to the discovery of previously unrecorded breeding groups the minimum population may have never been less than twenty. Slightly more than 8 - 12 perhaps, but a tiny population that still made it one of the rarest birds in the world of course. And one that really had very little habitat left to expand back into: as of today the wild population of Echo Parakeets is restricted to an area of less than 40 sq km of remnant native upland forest found within the 6800 hectare Black River Gorges National Park.

As of 30th April 2008 (as I’m writing this the 2008/2009 nesting season is underway) an estimated 362 wild Echo Parakeets were considered to be alive. 288 wild birds have been seen, and the maximum population estimate - assuming that some birds are alive somewhere on the island but not counted this year - is 431. 101 birds fledged from nests in the wild in 2007/2008, and, as the Management Report points out, the total population increase of twenty nine birds in the 2007/2008 season is not high when compared with the number of chicks produced but a number of birds died (or disappeared) with Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease (which has been visibly prevalent in the Echo Parakeet population since 2004/05) in the past year.

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores