South-east coast of Mauritius Local time: GMT +4 Approx noon temp: 28C Weather: Overcast with light cloud in the morning, spits of rain from 14:00.

Mauritius is part of the Mascarene Islands, an archipelago formed some 8 -10 million years ago in a series of undersea volcanic eruptions as the African plate drifted over the Réunion hotspot. When the first Europeans landed on the then almost uninhabited island in 1598, Mauritius was a wildlife paradise. Blanketed in lowland ebony forest, with thicker, taller wet forest covering the slopes of the many steep gorges and hillsides, the island had numerous endemic forest birds and plants. A stunningly beautiful place, it was recognised worldwide as an archetypal “Paradise” - so wonderful it apparently caused Mark Twain to write that “God first created Mauritius, then Heaven”.

If that’s true, God must have become mightily pissed-off as successive waves of colonisers arrived (the Portugese first, then the Dutch, French, and British) and tore Mauritius’s unique eco-systems apart. Within 100 years of its discovery the island’s rich wildlife was plunged into crisis - hunted in staggering numbers, their habitats removed, their nests and chicks destroyed by introduced and unnatural predators like macaques, dogs, cats, and rats. Come forward to the present day and many of the endemic birds are either extinct or have been through catastrophic decline.

The litany of lost endemic birds is depressing - from the world’s most well-known metaphor for permanent loss, the flightless Dodo, to the Mauritius Broad-billed Parrot, Grey Parrot, Mauritian Duck, and Red Rail. For so many species to have evolved on an island just 2,040 km² in area in the first place is proof of how hard natural selection impacts on life - for so many to have died out is proof of how hard Man impacts on natural selection…

Ile aux Aigrettes:
It’s something of an irony then, that the last chances for Mauritius’s wonderful birds still lies in the hands of Man - fortunately, though, more caring ones this time round.

Managed by the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF), the Ile aux Aigrettes is a 26 hectare speck just a few hundred metres off Mauritius’s south-east coast. The island was declared a Nature Reserve in 1985, and the MWF has been working hard to restore the original ebony forest and eradicate invasive alien plants, remove the destructive and introduced rats, and to use the island as a “working laboratory for conservation of endemic species” (work that led MWF to being awarded the prestigious “Leisure and Travel 2005 Global Vision Award for Ecological Conservation” in November). ‘Conservation of endemic species’ eh? Now, that has to be a good thing…

If you ask any birder, they’ll have a list of birds that he/she has always wanted to see - and there’ll usually be one or two birds that are on the list for no better reason that it’s got a great name (eg Superciliared Hemispingus), or that it somehow ticks all the right boxes even if they can’t quite say why. One of my “most want-to-see, not-sure-exactly-why” birds for about twenty years has been the PINK PIGEON Columba/Streptopelia mayeri, a bulky 14inch /36cm pigeon that until just recently was one of the rarest birds in the world: yes, I like forest pigeons, it’s very rare, I’d have to go to Mauritius to see one, and it’s PINK…but aside from that, its never grabbed me and gone “Look at me, I’m gorgeous”. I’ve just wanted to see one for a very long time…

And if you feel remotely the same way, then the place to go is undoubtedly Ile aux Aigrettes, because the chances are you’ll get views of wild Pink Pigeons like this one…

At one time, the Pink Pigeon was found throughout Mauritius. Subfossil remains from Mare aux Songes confirm that they were found in the lowlands but by the 19th century Pink Pigeons were confined to the upland forest and its distribution had become heavily fragmented by the early 1900’s. The destruction of native forest on a massive scale, the persecution of pigeons by people and the introduction of a variety of exotic predators have all contributed to the decline of the Pink Pigeon. By the 1950’s there were thought to be only 40 to 60 Pink Pigeons left. By the early 1970’s the Pink Pigeon was confined to the upland forests of the Black River Gorges, Macchabée and Brise Fer ridges. By the early 1980’s this range had declined to a single population of 20 birds near Bassin Blanc in a grove of introduced Japanese Red Cedar Cryptomeria japonica called Pigeon Wood. In 1986, only 12 Pigeons could be found in Pigeon Wood and the five nesting attempts recorded all failed due to predation by Rats. (Adapted from www.mauritian-wildlife.org/pigeon.htm.)

Intensive rearing efforts on Ile aux Aigrettes has been the main reason that the population of Pink Pigeon now stands at around 360 (Vikash Tatayah, MWF pers comm, Nov 2005) - of those, there are about 75 on the islet.

The only way to get across to Ile aux Aigrettes is to go on a pre-arranged tour (details below) with a guide from MWF.

If that sounds quite “organised”, Mauritus’s eco-tourism infra-structure will seem remarkably undeveloped to anyone used to the guided tours offered in, for example, the US or UK, and the meeting place for would-be visitors hoping to see one of the world’s rarest birds is a small roundel on a beach near to Point d’Esny (about 20 minutes from the airport). A small motor boat shuttles across the shallow lagoon out to the island in less than ten minutes, where visitors are helped onto a jetty and up along a footpath to the island’s gift-shop (all proceeds go back into conservation) and tiny Museum.

(Incidentally, despite it being Saturday there were just two other people besides me on the boat - neither of them birders. There was already a group being shown round the island when we got there - none had binoculars, and according to our guide - the knowledgeable and amusing Oliver Cartil - few “proper” birders visit. Perhaps there are few birders visiting Mauritius anyway - but as funding for the work on the island comes from visitors and their donations it’s a shame that so few birders go there.)

Whilst I was in a hurry to get out and see the birds themselves (who wouldn’t be), the Museum is definitely worth a visit. It houses a selection of absolutely beautiful life-size replica bronzes made by Nick Bibby of some of the species that no visitor to Mauritius or Ile aux Aigrettes will ever see again - no matter how long they look.

I’d come straight off the flight from London to Point d’Esny, driven by visions of the rare birds I was about to see, and it was sobering to be confronted with the reality of the environmental destruction wrought here. Take a look at the photo of the model of the Dodo (right) to see what I mean…imagine finding such an amazing looking bird shuffling around the ebony forests, hoovering up fruits and seeds. Of course, “imagining” is all that’s left to us…

Another lesson to be learnt at the museum, is that - of course - it’s not just birds that have been affected: “18 native reptile species once inhabited the main island of Mauritius, but five are now extinct, six are now relict populations on the surrounding offshore islets and the remaining seven are all in decline” (Nik Cole: Bristol University).

Scuttling along the walls was one of the most striking little reptiles I’d ever seen - the endemic Ornate Day Gecko Phelsuma ornata (below).

I have no idea at all why a gecko needs to look like this - but how wonderful that it does. Worth the cost of the trip alone…

Actually, that last comment was a bit of a “throw-away”. No matter how “ornate” the local reptiles, what I’d really paid my 8000MRupees for was to see the pigeons, and after about ten minutes of chat Oliver finally led us out of the museum and into the head-high scrub.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the trip before I’d left London: maybe a brief view of a pigeon-like bird hurtling through the canopy above me, maybe an aviary with a few ragged-looking birds sitting disconsolately in a corner. The truth - as it often is - was very different.

Within about a minute Oliver was pointing through the bushes. Ten metres away, craning its neck to reach into a feeder, was a Pink Pigeon. Absolutely wild, not a feather out of place, but obviously in no hurry to hurtle off anywhere. It was actually quite a surreal moment to be honest….twenty years (and ten minutes) of waiting, and there right in front of me was this exceptionally rare bird, pretty much unconcerned that it was being watched, looking for all the world like a large Collared Dove grabbing grain off a garden bird table.

Within another minute or two we were standing on a purpose-built platform overlooking another feeding-station, where I took the following photographs.

Pink Pigeons Columba/Streptopelia mayeri

The pigeons here are absolutely free to leave Ile aux Aigrettes, but very few have (all the birds are banded so they could be identified if they turned up on the mainland). That’s not just down to food - what a bird needs most to feel at home is the right habitat (as well, of course, as not being blasted at by a shotgun every time they settle). The strategy being enacted here is, wisely, long-term - and habitat restoration is a continually ongoing process.

The next stop on the Tour was a look at the regenerating Ebony forest in the heart of the islet. Growing on a bed of almost solid coral, the trees here (which include Figs and Euphorbia, as well as Ebony) struggle up to form a canopy 7 metres high. Chopped down and exploited remorselessly in the past many of the associated plants and trees here are unique to Mauritius - and have peculiar names based - according to our guide - around what they smell like when they begin to atrophy: Rat Tree and Beef Tree for example (though perhaps the truth is a little less prosaic - the Rat Tree’s fruits are eaten by Rats, and the Beef Tree may well be named instead for the boobies (in French=boeuf) that nested on these trees when they were both more widespread - Vikash Tatayah, MWF pers comm, Nov 2005).

A more fragrant, and particularly beautiful, member of the plant community is the endemic tree-orchid Oeniella aphrodite, an epiphyte that (luckily for me) flowers in October and November and gives off a gentle fragrance somewhat reminiscent of a camelia. It’s a beautiful plant, and - remarkably given the high rates of divergence and speciation in the island’s birds - it’s just one of only two orchids found here (the other being the very rare Disperis tripetaloides).

Ebony Forest (upper) and Oeniella aphrodite (below)

Again, it’s worth pointing out that these forests were once widespread and were the favoured habitat of not only the Pink Pigeon, but the Dodo - and also yet another of Mauritius’s threatened endemics, the MAURITIUS FODY Foudia rubra.

Confined to Madagascar and outlying Indian Ocean islands - more evidence of evolution working hard on isolated island populations - fodies are members of the Ploceidae, and are therefore closely related to Weavers and Sparrows. In terms of plumage and behaviour they are clearly descended from the African queleas and bishops - social weavers that are also predominantly red and black. Two species occur in Mauritius: one - the introduced Madagascar Fody Foudia madagascariensis - is widespread, the second - the endemic Mauritius Fody - is very rare indeed. Bolstered by breeding and release programmes on Ile aux Aigrettes, numbers of this subtly distinctive species are starting to climb and there are plans to release some on other predator-free islets where the right habitat still exists (Vikash Tatayah, MWF pers comm, Nov 2005) * see update below).

Whilst it can be found at the Black River Gorges National Park on the mainland, Ile aux Aigrettes is by far the best place to see Mauritius Fody - though even here it’s a wary species and doesn’t stay settled in one place for very long…also do be aware that Madagascar Fody is common on the islet: in the photos below, note the deeper and more restricted red of Mauritius, and the thicker, blunter bill of Madagascar.

MAURITIUS FODY Foudia rubra

 

Madagascar Fody Foudia madagascariensis

Update: Taken with permission from the MWF newsletter of April 2007:

I spent about four hours on this mini-Tour (probably longer than most people who go on it as I was so determined to get some decent photos), and it was worth every second.

The work being done here is inspirational. There’s far more going on than I’ve covered in this short report, including investigating seed-dispersal by introduced Aldabra Giant Tortoises which, it’s hoped, will aid the spread of vegetation in much the same way the now-extinct Mauritian Giant Tortoise did, and building up a viable colony of Telfair’s Skink Leiolopisma telfairii, a Mauritian endemic reptile now only found in the wild on Round Island (off the north coast).

If you get a chance to visit Mauritius, please contact the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation beforehand and book a visit to this last outpost of all that was good about Mauritius before the island’s earliest visitors got there and trashed the place…

Telfair’s Skink Leiolopisma telfairii and Aldabran Giant Tortoise Geochelone gigantea

Should you wish to help MWF in its conservation work you are welcome to make a donation:

• Send a Cheque or postal order, made payable to The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, Grannum
  Road, Vacoas, Mauritius,

OR

• Send a direct credit, Beneficiary Bank: The Mauritius Commercial Bank Ltd.- Port Louis – Mauritius
  Swift BIC: MCBLMUMU / Account Number: 010204792 / Account Currency: MUR OR

Mauritian Wildlife Foundation
Lone Raffray – Fund Raising Coordinator
Grannum Road
Vacoas
Mauritius
Tel: 697-6097 Fax: 697-6512
Email: mwffund@intnet.mu

Please include your full name and contacts including e-mail address, with all donations. Thanks in advance - Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.

 

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Trip List (12 and 13 Nov) [(I)=introduced]:
English and scientific names mainly from “Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands”, Sinclair I. and Langrand O., Struik, 2003:
White-tailed Tropicbird Phaethon lepturus 5, Green-backed Heron Butorides striatus 4-5, MAURITIUS KESTREL Falco punctatus 1, Grey Francolin Francolinus pondicerianus (I) 1, Turnstone Arenaria interpres 1, Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis (I) 5+, Zebra Dove Geopelia striata (I) 20+, Madagascar Turtle Dove Streptopelia madagascariensis (I?) c)10, PINK PIGEON Nesoenas mayeri c)10, ECHO PARAKEET Psitticula echo 6-7, Mascarene Swiftlet Collocalia francia c)10, Mascarene Martin Phedina borbonica 3, Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus (I) ++, MAURITIUS GREY WHITE-EYE Zosterops mauritianus c)30, MAURITIUS CUCKOO SHRIKE Coracina typica 3, Common Mynah Acridotheres tristis (I) +, House Crow Corvus splendens (I) 2, Madagascar Fody Foudia madagascariensis (I) +, MAURITIUS FODY Foudia rubra 2, House Sparrow Passer domesticus (I) 30+, Village Weaver Ploceus cucullatus (I) 20+ (one colony), Common Waxbill Estrilda astrild (I) c)10

 

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All photographs - EXCEPT arial shot of island (copyright unknown) - copyright Charlie Moores, 12 November 2005

 

For more information:
African Conservation/Mauritius
BirdLife: Pink Pigeon
Mauritian History
Wikipedia: Dodo
BBC: DNA yields Dodo family secrets
BBC: Scientists find “mass dodo grave”