News

Good News for South Georgia’s Pipit Population

January 24, 2015 by Meredith Mann 2 Comments

A bird species battling an onslaught of invasive rats just got a glimpse of hope. Researchers say that South Georgia Pipits have hatched chicks. (Image above by Brian Gratwicke/Wikimedia Commons)

While this is happy news for any parents, and wonderful news for any threatened species (these Pipits live only in South Georgia, near Antarctica, and number only 3,000-4,000 pairs), it’s tremendous news for those trying to eradicate rats from the island. That’s because these birds won’t breed when rats are around. (And let’s face it, would you go to all the effort of breeding if there was a hefty chance that your newborn would just go down some invader’s gullet?)

The discovery of five chicks in an area once overrun by rats suggest that the South Georgia Heritage Trust’s “Team Rat” project is producing tangible success. A final round of baiting just launched in what’s being called the world’s largest rat-eradication project.

If no signs of rats are found by 2017, the island will be determined rodent-free for the first time since humans set foot on it more than two centuries ago. Which would give the South Georgia Pipit—the most southerly songbird on the planet—something worth singing about.

Written by Meredith Mann
The lowly Red-winged Blackbirds in suburban New York triggered Meredith Mann's interest in birds. Five years later, she's explored some of the the USA's coolest hotspots, from Plum Island in Massachusetts to the Magic Hedge in Chicago to the deserts of Fallon, Nevada. She recently migrated from the Windy City (where she proudly served as a Chicago Bird Collision Monitor, rescuing migrants from skyscrapers and sidewalks) to Philadelphia, where she plans to find new editing and writing gigs; keep up her cool-finds chronicle, Blog5B; and discover which cheesesteak really is the best. And she will accept any and all invitations to bird Cape May, NJ.