An Interview with Dave Boyle; The Seabirds of Chatham Island; Part 2

Lying 700km east of New Zealand, in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, lie the Chatham Islands. This far flung location is one of the finest locations in the world for breeding seasbirds. Sadly, many of them are now critically endangered. I could not pass up the opportunity of talking to Dave Boyle, on of the Chatham Island Taiko Trust team. Over the past decade or so, Dave has been working tirelessly with Seabirds on these islands and has made serious efforts to field record many of them. He was king enough to come on to the podcast and share some quite remarkable recordings of a wide range of seabird species. Many of these recording are of very high quality and some of them may contain calls that are previously unrecorded. Over the course of two episodes, Dave takes us into the hidden world of breeding seabirds in the Pacific Ocean, shares his expansice knowledge of these species and talks about the work being carried out with regard to one of the world rarest seabird species, the Chatham Island Taiko.

This long interview was broken down into two episodes, due to the long running time and large number of field recordings. 

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https://www.taiko.org.nz/

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 You are all very welcome to Wild Bird Acoustics. I'm your host, Alan Dalton, and I'll be taking you on a journey into sound. Now welcome everybody once again to Wild Bird Acoustics. I'm your host, Alan Dalton, and this is an interview with Dave Boyle, part two. Now just for the sake of continuity, I'm not gonna talk too much. We're gonna get straight back into the interview with Dave Boyle, all the way from the Pacific Ocean on the Chatham Islands. This is an interview with Dave Boyle, part two. . Now welcome back to Wild Bird Acoustics, everybody. I'm still here with Dave Boyle and we are talking about seabirds on the Chatham Islands. Now Dave, we're gonna move on and we are, we're just gonna get straight into some audio. , We've quite a few to get through a, a large number of species. The next one is common diving. Petrol. And they're a fairly common species. Are they? They are, yeah. Um, so they're. They, they, I mean, they're tiny. Um, so they're very vulnerable to rapid predation they were gone from the main island. Um, but yeah, they've, they've kind of naturally colonized Sweetwater. Um, so yeah, we've got a sound system going there, which had diving petrol calls on and yeah, that's sucked in quite a few. So yeah, we've got quite a few pairs there. I'm not sure what, what the sort of numbers are on the islands. Um. A lot. I'll play this first recording. Um, I think this is quite a closeup recording if I recall. So what's going on there? Is that a, is that a male or No, that's a female. Is it? Okay. Um, so, so the males have got like a, like a simpler, like a single note call and the females have got like a multi, multi note call. Most of the calls aren't getting in Sweetwater are females, which seems odd. Um, 'cause yeah, you'd, you'd expect, you'd expect single birds to be males. The own boroughs rather than females. So yeah, not, not too sure what's going on there. Yeah. We have another recording from Sweetwater of the same species, common diving and petrol. Uh, this one is in the rain, actually. Uh, I'll play that now. 어. 어 어 어. 어. 어. 어? 어. 어? 어. 어 아. 어 어. 어? 아 So how about that one, Dave? See again that, that that's a female again. Yeah, I haven't got many recordings of males at all. , The biggest problem with any sort of, um, getting recordings of seabird calls is the best nights are wet, windy nights. Um, which obviously aren't the best nights for, for getting recordings. we're gonna move on to another species now, which is fuller pri. a very small bird, I think. , 11th of November, 2025. And this is quite a harsh grading call. This is from the pyramid, I believe. Yeah, so this is another one I didn't actually get, uh, mate, cam, I gave him a recorder and yeah, he, he got these, um, this spring. Okay, we'll play that now. This is Fuller p. so the New Zealanders a so prior taxonomy is a nightmare. It's, it's always been a nightmare. They, they all pretty much look the same. The only sort of real differences are in bill structure. Um, but yeah, it kind of turns out the, the former prime various populations of former primes. Are more related to the fairy prs in those same areas in other former prs. Um, so the former PRS on the pyramid, apparently genetically distinct from all other former prs. So the New Zealanders are split them. Um mm-hmm. But yeah, they, I mean they, they look and, I mean, probably sound identical to other former primes. So there's former primes on the Bounty islands, which I don't, they're probably, I dunno, 500 kilometers south of. Um, but yeah, so I mean, there's absolutely no way you'd ever, I mean, unless you were on the pyramid, there's absolutely no way you'd know. Yeah. If it's a, a pyramid form of prying or a bounties form of pry. Yeah. How well covered is the pyramid. Is, is that a place where there could be other species that you wouldn't know about or, uh, no. It, it's, I mean, it's not visited very often. Uh, Mike and Cam were there this spring for a few nights, which would be the first time anyone's sort of stayed on the island for quite a few years. I mean, pe people have been there fairly regularly in the last sort of 30 years or so. , I mean, normally just once a year, um, for a few nights sort of thing. Yeah. Okay. We're gonna move on to another species. And, uh, when I listened to all these recordings, Dave, I, I just made some notes and stuff just beside them and, uh, I've written the word well. Beside this one, uh, this is, this is gray petrol. Oh yeah. No, these are amazing, isn't they? Yeah, absolutely. Incredible noise near threatened species. And it's recorded at a place called Point Gap. Where is that? Um, that's just, that's on the coast here. So that's about a kilometer from where I'm now. Okay. And it's, it's, I'll play it now. It's like a vibrating kind of nasal trill as, I dunno how you'd describe it. We'll just play a recording. It's the easiest way to do it. This is great petrol. That's just fantastic, isn't it? That Cole? So yeah, so that was a. That was a vagrant, but, um, so it came back. So they're, they're a winter breeder. Um, and yeah, that came back three, three years running, um, into a Penguin nest box on the coast here. Okay. So not a regular species at all on the islands? No. So the only place the, the nearest breeders are on Anti's Island, which is I know, probably about 800,000 kilometers to the south of here. Yeah. Somebody's recordings must be incredibly rare. Are they? yeah. I mean, yeah, some of them, some of 'em won't have been recorded very often. Um, so I actually did, I, I did quite a bit of work on, on Tip's Island. I, I went there four years running and I never took a sound recorder there. And there's hundreds and hundreds of gray petrols there. So I sort of always kick myself from not getting recordings of them. 'cause Yeah, imagine having like, like, like 50 of those sort of all singing together. Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. It must be absolutely fantastic just to sit out in these places at night and just hear all this kind of stuff going on. Oh, yeah, abs Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, the only thing is it's the, the noisiest nights you need pretty bad weather. , You need a bit of wind. You need a bit of rain to get a really good night. . It brings them down. Does it the rain or? Yeah, I think that it is just darker. Um, and yeah, the birds sort of feel safer. Yep. So there's no moon, there's no moonlighting cover, do they? Yeah, exactly. Are, are there predators, avian predators at night or, um, so, I mean, bright nights there are, so there, there's brown skewers sort of nesting down here. People have seen them sort of in the bush at night on sort of full moon nights. Um, just hunting storm petrol. Well. Don't really need to hunt them, you just pick 'em up off the ground. Um, and yeah, I mean, goals on the coast, um, HARs, HARs around. Yeah. But I mean, at least they're natural competitors, so it's, you know, they've, yeah. Yeah. They've evolved to keep away from those, I suppose. But unfortunately, yeah, the ground competitors are a different story. Completely. . We'll move on to Juan Fernandez Petrol. Um, kapa Swap Ran again, this is February, 2026. I'll play the recording first. So Juan Fernandez petrol, is this a regular breeding species or. Don't really know, to be honest with you. Um, so yeah, so I think there was only, I can't remember if I, I sent you the full recording or just a clip of it. It was either only two or four calls of one Fernando Petrol amongst the Chad and Petrols there. Um, they're around, there were a couple of birds regularly being seen on Ranier in the eighties into the early nineties. And then one bird was found. It was, it was killed by a skewer and sightings kind of dried up. , And then about five, five or six years ago, I got a, a single recording of a bird on Ranier. Again, just flying over. Um, and then the following year, um, some people actually saw one on the summit there and I got more rec record. I left a recorder on the summit for a couple of months and got more recordings. And then in January this year I actually caught one, um, where I'd do the s spotlighting for Tako caught. one sort of came in there and then, yeah, it was on Ranier in February and you heard that bird and. So people doing a PLE here in, February or Mar March? Probably. They actually saw two birds one evening, so Yeah, they, they're here. Um, they haven't been proved to be breeding, but yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there, if there is, they're out there. Yeah. On Bush breeders again, are they? They'd be bush breezes again and Yeah, I mean, Ranier, I mean, there's so many birds on there. I mean, the island's so fragile. With all the borrowers. So there's big areas people just never go. So I mean, who, who know, who knows? What else is there? We do have a second recording of, uh, Juan Fernandez Petrol. This is from, uh, Ranier Summit and it's kind of a low Uwe call. I, I would describe it. 2000. Yeah. It's actually really distinctive when you hear it. Okay. So it, it's something that'll just, you know, obviously you have a great ear for these things 'cause you're out there all the time. But we played recording first. This is Juan Fernandez Petrol. Yeah, I can see how that'd be quite distinctive. So yeah, so that was, I had, I had a record out there for, I think it was running for like four hours a night for about a month, and picked up the one Fernan, I think it was only twice. So yeah, there, there's obviously not many, but yeah, it's sort of black wing petrol in the background there. There's hamama and snip in the background there as well. Again, , I'll wait. We've gone through the recordings maybe to ask about the other bird species on the island, but the next, next species we have is leeches storm petrol. I, I'm not sure how many species I've actually seen off this list of your recordings. I think two Le Lee's storm petrol is one of them. And, and what, so Shearwater? Yeah. So Shearwater, yeah, sure. I don't think, no, I don't think there's any others on I've seen. But, um, yeah, this is storm petrol. Um, and this is recorded Ranier Summit again, it's February, 2026, so I'll play it now. So the Leach is that kind of high chuckling call. Um, yeah. Are they a common breeder on the island? No. No, no. Not at all. , The nearest known breeders are in Japan. so they, they basically shouldn't be here. Um, but oh, I think it was about 2000, maybe about 2017, 2018. Um, there was people on the island. There's, there's a few nest boxes put in for Blackman Petrols, um, up on the, on the summit on Ranier and Gemma Green. Who works for Department of Conservation here. She opened up a box and found a literally storm petrol on an egg. I mean, it was the first breed in New Zealand to say nearest breeders in Japan. Mm-hmm. Um, unfortunately, the breed attempt failed. One of the adults was actually killed by a bra belt prime and the egg was abandoned. . And then, yeah, the birds kind of disappeared. But the same night I got that first one, Fernandez Petrol called and had a Leach's petrol go over on it as well. So again, I left the recorder up on the summit the following year and got a lot of recordings of leeches. And then the year after that I was up there and with with friend Eden Eden Whitehead. And. We were just sat in the dark and just heard a bird go over and I heard it and Eden didn't. So I just like with the torch, just said, oh, I kind of went over here and just like pointed with the torch where it went. And then the bird just came fluttering down the torch beam and landed at her feet. And that one was unbranded, so it wasn't one of the original sort of breeding pair. 'cause both of those birds got banded. And then, yeah, it was there again this year and had that recorder up there. I obviously really close to where the bird was, was coming back to. Uh, one of the years I got, um, I got recordings of PI mean, poor recordings, but yeah, you can hear a bird purring in the background. And, um, apparently the only purr, if they're definitely breeding, um, like non breeders just don't purr. So, okay. They're up there somewhere. There's this, there's a small breeding population. Yep. Here, OMA, we, we have another short recording. A short recording this time, and. It's just the noise in the background to, so you share orders is incredible. Um, I'll play the recording now. This is Leech's Storm Petrol once again. So that's Leach's storm petrol. , Next we're gonna move on to a much larger species, , Northern Bullard Albatross. Um, this was recorded in the 40 fours these are near threatened, these species. This is Northern Bull's Albatross. Uh, what a brilliancy on that is. It's amazing. So the, the only place to camp on the island is right in the middle of the colony. And some, there's something like 18,000 pairs on the main island. Wow. And I mean, that, that was a, that must have been a very quiet part of the day. 'cause Yeah, you, you just hear that thousands and burns doing that all day long all around you. Uh, I've noticed actually something that a lot of these birds are just looking at the dates of the recording. They're, when the birds start to appear. I mean, the breeding season seems to be quite extended if, if you include all of the species, if you know what I mean. Yeah. So you've got, you've got like summer breeders, order them breeders and winter breeders. Mm-hmm. And I mean a lot of them have like a long sort of courtship period as well. Um, so something like a, like, I mean, channel Mind and Tyco, the adults. They, they have the, the courtship periods in sort of early October. Uh, but then they go away for two months before they come back and sort of lay the egg. They have like this sort of pre relay in Exodus. Um, so yeah, I mean, Chad and Petrols do the same, but it's shorter. Maybe a bit, maybe only about a month. I mean the albatrosses, I mean, Bulls will be laying, or October time probably. Um, yeah, but I mean, someone like, I mean like the royals, I mean, they, they've got, their checks are around for, checks probably hatch in probably January and don't fledge until sort of August. Yeah. Um, so yeah, so they, they actually can't breed every year. If, if they, if they, if they raise a chick, they, they can't breed that year because they, they just don't have time. Yeah. So it's every second year basically. They're, they're, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hopefully producing the chick, the fledge. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's just such a slow recovery for this species if they're, you know, endangered and, yeah. And everything's, I mean, all petrols, it's just one egg, and if that egg fails, that, that's it. The, yeah. No second Or they never lay a second leg? Nah, nah. I mean the, the famous conservation story from the Chas is Black robin. Um, but I mean, with Black Robins, you were able to take away clutches of eggs and they, they'd lay another clutch of eggs. Yeah. And you can put them, do an ator. You can't do that. Yeah. Yeah. They must invest in the egg then The egg must be huge. Is it? It is. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I want to come back actually in Thai code. There's one question I I wanted to ask you. I know you've put some, um, radio transmitters on these birds, some GPSs. What has that actually revealed so, so I mean that's, I mean, that's kind of two different things. So the radio transmitters, uh, we're catching birds here, which we hope have got boroughs in, in the bush. Mm-hmm. So you put the radio transmitter on. I mean, you could, you can't hear it, but that, that's beeping. So then you're, you sort of go out with a, with a receiver and an antenna and sort of you, you're trying to find the borough. Um, and yes, I mean, it's, it's quite hard here., The bush isn't really mapped or the island's very, very poorly mapped. And I mean, it's the, the bush is so thick here. You, you, there's, there's whole ridges and valleys, which you just can't see on the map. So you can't just, oh, I just follow this, this valley down. Wave Montana around and try and pick up the signal. Um, but yeah, quite, quite a lot of the boroughs have been found that way. The only tracking I've done really is put in these little Geo Loc allocators on, uh, which are like a little tiny little tiny logger, which you sort of put on a, on a band on the bird's leg. And that records light levels and really accurate time, so you can then compare it. With, um, UTC, so you get like dawn and dusk times for UTC. Okay. And then from that you, you can work out a rough position of where the bird is. Okay. So they're really good for like, so long range migration. So, yeah, so we, we know most of the birds here. Um, they crossed the Pacific in about 10 days or so to the south. Um, they hit sort of southern Chile and then they seemed to work their way up The Humboldt current. Yeah. And then they're normally hanging around for, for most of the winter off north, northern Chile, Southern Peru. There's a couple of, um, sort of sort of sea mounts up there, sort of underwater ridges. Um, and yeah, they, they're mainly sort of hanging around there. , A few birds seem to do something different. Um, there used to be birds here that went across to the Australian coast. Um, but yeah, they've possibly died out those ones. Okay. So a, a difference kind of distance to travel. Completely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean it's, it's possibly, I mean, it seems to be inherited. Um, I mean we've, we've got very little, little data on it, but, um, fellow Graham Taylor, , who's worked with Tyco for a long, long time. He put Geolocators on birds 15 years ago. He had birds go into areas that we don't, we didn't have birds going to when we did it. Um, I tried to track birds related to the bird's. GRA had tracked so he had one bird that instead of crossing the Pacific, sort of hung around in the South Fiji basin, which is sort of north of New Zealand, sort of between New Zealand, new Caledonia and Fiji. And I tracked that bird's sun. And the son did the same thing. He was the only bird we had that didn't cross the Pacific. He went to the same areas as his dad had gone to. Okay. That's interesting. And do you have much information about the kind of fa distance that they travel when they're actually breeding? Um, so yeah, there's a fellow, um, Joe Chambon, who's just fi finishing off a PhD on them. He, he did some tracking of birds, like GPS tracking and yeah, . I mean, feeding trips can be pretty long. Um, as the checks get bigger, they, they, the adults are away for longer and feed 'em less. It's, it's not unusual for one of the parents to be away for a couple of weeks before it comes back again and feeds the check. Okay. And yeah, we, we know they go and sort of, I dunno, 1500 miles or so there, there's a big chain of sea mounts out, out to the east of here. Um, they're moving well away from the Orleans. Oh, well away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well away. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We'll move on to the next species, Dave. It's Northern Royal Albatross and this is another fantastic recording. It's kind of a there bill snapping in here. There's the wheezing calls. Just, I think this is full display. Is it? Yeah. So the, you, you, you get groups of young birds sort of like gather and then they sort of display at each other. Yep. I'll play it now. This is Northern Royal Albatross. Ah. Fantastic recording, uh, recorded at a place called the Sisters. So, yeah, that's a little group of islands just off the north coast here. Okay. It's a wonderful recording. Um, next species is soft, plumage petrol. Dave, this is recorded at Sweetwater. And is this a rare species on the island? It is, yeah. They, they're possibly spreading. Um, so same, same as gray petrol, the nearest known breeders on on T's island. The bird in this recording was around four. Three or four years sort of displaying over sweet water or maybe about five years ago, um, Bruce Tuna, his grandson Henry, found one in a Penguin nest box on the coast here. And then I got a recording another one over Sweetwater, back in like December I think it was. So they're around. Yeah, I'll play the uh, recording. This is soft plumage petrol. That's a remarkable call, isn't it? It is. Isn't. It's quite amazing it's amazing. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, another thing is sort of regret from anti activities island. There's sort of like, they kind of nest in like ny sort of valleys and stuff on the island that they, they seems like quite wet areas and Yeah, it could have had a recorder out there and could have had like dozens of them sort of flying around calling at the same time. I, I, I think you're gonna have to get yourself back there, Dave. Next up. So Shearwater, um, I assume these are absolutely everywhere. They, um, yeah. I mean they, they died out on the main island. Um, they su sort of survived on the main island into the eighties and then, yeah, pretty much sort of fizzled out then, but yeah, really, really common on some of the offshore islands. Yeah, this is recorded at Ranier somewhat again. Um, sixth February, 2026. And yeah, it's a wide soundscape. This one, a lot of birds involved here. This is soy shearwater. Yeah, you alluded to earlier in the interview, you know what these places must have sounded like, you know, a few hundred years ago. Yes. So the, the Maori name for ran, which I can't actually. Re remember exactly off, off the top of my head, um, means something like the island that reverberates with the sound of birds. Okay. Yeah. So is probably, probably one of the, I mean, they're probably, I mean, certainly on the islands, they're, they're, they're still at the numbers. They've probably always been. Um, and yeah, and ev every morning they, they just start this sort of pre-do exodus. Sort of calling, start about two hours before dawn, and then, yeah, just, just like the whole island just erupts with noise and then sort of gradually fizzles out as the birds leave. , It's quite hard to get sort of recordings of it. 'cause if, if you're close, you just get swamped by the close birds. Yeah. And if, if you're far away, then it, it kind of doesn't necessarily sound so impressive. But yeah, I mean, if you're actually out in it, you, you actually feel. You actually feel the calls in your body Yeah. The vibration moving through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, yeah. I mean it's pretty remarkable to be honest. I, I was sound recording bittering a few days ago and I had that sensation, you know, it's amazing when you get close to a bitter, it's probably the same. It literally resonates right through you. It's remarkable. So we have one species left. It's white face storm petrol. So this first one is the hooting call. And it's February, 2026, and I'll play it for you first folks, and then we'll have a chat about it. This is Whiteface Storm Petrol Hooding call. So you can clearly hear multiple birds there. Yeah, ranier. I mean, say the, the population estimate from the early nineties were something like 750,000 birds. Wow. I mean, it's, it's quite a small island. Um, it's not, it's not a big island. Um, it would be smaller than Cape Clear the island. It's only increased since then. You go out at night and the whole, the whole track's just littered with 'em. Um, okay. Put on a head torch. You, you've got like, just, just like birds flying into your face every few seconds. Um, . Sorry. Are they like storm petrols? Are they, they they nest in crevices and holes, or? No, they're little, little boroughs in the ground. So I mean, they're in forests as well. Um, and yeah, real, real, really shallow, shallow little boroughs. Um, but the way you see 'em skipping over the sea, um, they, they do that through the forest floor as well. Okay. Really? Yeah, I have actually, I've seen these actually not the subspecies, I actually seen White Place now that I think of it down the can years ago. And I was absolutely gobsmacked when I saw them doing the, the leap frog thing. It was, it's incredible to watch. So, yeah. Yeah, seeing that on, on the forest floor is amazing as well. And then, yeah, then to take off, they, they have to get up, up above the canopy. So you see 'em like fluttering, sort of climbing up trees. So, yeah, so I mean, I mean from a, certainly from a sort of northern European sort of, uh, perspective. Yeah. Seabirds down here are just, you just seem in like completely different sort of scenarios and things you never knew, things you never thought you'd see basically. Yeah. Or never even imagined happening, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Quite amazing. We played one more recording of wifi storm petrol. Uh, this is ran once again, and this sounds like a squeaky toy, almost this bird. So that's quite obviously a different call, Dave. Is that a, a female or. Yeah, I'm not too sure to be honest with you. I mean, that's, I mean, that sounded like, I mean, the hootin, I'm presume is a male. Um, and yeah, that, that other call, I don't know really know, to be honest. I don't know. I kind of assumed that it was like an aggressive call, but I don't, I don't think it is. I think in that recording you can hear it's two different birds, so. I dunno, dunno. Yeah. There's a lot still to learn obviously with all these Oh absolutely. Yeah. I mean if, I mean, I dunno. Last time I looked on ZI canto, there were, there weren't that many recordings of white face storm petrol and that hooting call I don't think was there. Um, so yeah, I don't, don't know if that call is like unique to the birds down here or whether it's a normal call, which just hasn't been recorded very often. Yeah, I noticed several sub species. I think it's, uh. Or something is the, is the down there. Yeah. So yeah, there's like I say, a lot to learn with all these birds and I suppose knowledge is the key. That that wraps up the recordings, at least for the moment. They're all incredible, Dave, and, and thanks for sharing them. I think people are really gonna enjoy these recordings. . Some incredibly rare species. So once again, just thanks for sharing these, Dave. Oh, I'm more than welcome, Alan. Okay. Um, before you go, we, uh, there are of course other birds on the island. Um, a list of endemic species. How is the boarding in general? Oh, I mean, God. You, you, I mean, I, I don't go bird anymore. I mean, I'm walking around in mm-hmm. In the bush every day. But yeah. I mean, you ne you never take binoculars. Um, trying to think. There's, so in the bush here, um, there's endemic warbler, um, chatman and warbler. Um mm-hmm. There's an endemic pigeon paia. There's a few Red crown parakeets. Then the other sort of Native Birds would be silver eye, little white eye, um, fantail, kind of little, little fly catchy thing. Um, that's probably it for, for Native Birds. And then there's Blackbird Song Thrash done at Chaffin Red Pole. Um, there's, there's more skylarks in the Chathams than probably the whole rest of the world put together. I mean you, you literally, you are walking around, you see 'em, I don't know, maybe 10, 12 species a day and you, you're just seeing the same species every day over and over again. Yeah. Over and over again. So yeah, the seabirds may up for it. The seabirds make up for it. Yeah, absolute. And if we were in a different area, you probably wade as would do a little bit as well. There can be sort of reasonable numbers and not, and bartel gold, but here, um, turn stones, w Wonder and Tatler seems to be fairly regular here. Um, and then o other, I mean, ribs turned up here a couple of times, which is like a, that one with the weird bill that sort of kicks to the left sideways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're on the chathams now at the island. When will you start to get busy with breeding seaboards again? Um, so we're actually really busy at the moment. Um, okay. We've, so we're just coming up to the first chicks f legend. Um, okay. So, yeah, Simon, I mean, there's. Try and keep an eye on the checks. If any of them are a bit light, sort of supplementary, feed them, um, still shift a few birds around. Some of the boroughs in the ku. Um, they're really low down to the borough floor and the, the birds struggle to fledge from them. They have to sort of get, get up above the canopy if, if you low down, um, they, they can't. They just struggle to, to fledge it, might take 'em several, several attempts to reach the sea. Yep. So in all that time, they're, they're losing, they're losing condition. So the, the, the heavier they are when they fledge, the better for 'em. Just with Sweetwater Dave, you know, with, with this relocation, um, project where you're, you're, you're moving , the chicks in, um, how successful has that been? I mean, how many chicks are you seeing coming back to the, to the Sweet Water area? So it's, it's been in, it's been incredibly successful, like, um, like unimaginably successful to be honest. The original transfers over five years or so, it was every single known check. It was like 58 birds over five years, . One of those years, it was something like 12 checks were transferred and 11 of them have returned. , You'd never in your wildest dreams expect to get that, a return rate like that. Um, things are slowed down. Um, I'm kind of wondering as, as the habitats recover and whether it's become a, a little bit too thick for them, um, we don't re, we're not. We're not really picking up that many prospecting birds anymore. They pair up instantly. Um, which is possibly one of the best indications we've got that the population is genuinely increasing. Uh, when I, when I started here, there were two single males in the Tuku. Uh, one of them. Went 19 years without ever finding a partner. The other one went the, yeah, the other one went 12 years before it paired up. Wow. And now we are, we are literally getting birds lose a partner that they're paired up again within a few months. That's great. It's great news. Okay. And o one, one more thing. If people want to actually make a donation to the, Chatham Whale and conservation project, is there a way they can do that? So, yeah, so the, the, the Chatham Island Tyco Trust has got a website. Um, I think you can do donations through that. The website's probably hasn't been updated in a while. Um, that's, that's a job for the winter. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, I, I'm pretty sure you can, you can do donations through that. Um. Yeah, I mean, it's just great work you guys are doing. So I think it'd be great if, if people could make a small donation, that would help. And yeah, and, and any donation is gratefully received. Absolutely. That's about it, Dave. Um, I just wanna thank you very, very much for sharing all these wonderful, wonderful recordings and especially, for you and the teams work out there. It's absolutely remarkable what you guys are doing and it's, it's fair play to you basically. Thanks, Helen. , Really, really good to see you again. Absolutely. I can't remember the last time I saw you. I, I think it was 1995 or six. I'm not sure on Cape, yeah, it was a great time, but, I, I don't think I'll be popping by the chattings anytime soon, but hopefully at some point, we'll actually, we'll meet again and, and just, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It'd be really good to see you again and, and yeah, really enjoy and listening to your podcast. That's good to hear. But, um, once again, Dave, thanks very, very much. So, there we go folks. That's an interview with Dave Boyle all the way from the Chatham Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Now, once again, I just wanna thank Dave for taking the time to come on to Wild Bird acoustics and sharing such wonderful recordings of the seabirds of the Chatham Islands. The recordings are quite incredible. I think they are very, very important, scientifically speaking, and it has been wonderful to be able to share these recordings through Dave on the podcast. . On a personal level, it's been wonderful to be able to catch up with Dave again after many years, and it just struck me during the interview, you know how him and the team are working tirelessly out there on the islands to protect and conserve these seabird species. When I talk to people who are involved in conservation projects all around the world, you hear the same things over and over again. . Habitat degradation problems with increasing numbers of people farming, invasive species, , fishing practices, and so on. So, you know, it's nice to hear a success story and kudos to the entire team out on the Chatham Islands. And thank you all for your efforts working with these incredible seabird species. Now, once again, I would just like to remind you, if you would like to donate anything to the Tyco Trust, you can do so quite easily online. If you just Google the Chatham Island Tyco Trust, you will find a website there. You can just click on the donate button and send a small donation to the efforts on the island. All donations gladly received, and it's for a very, very good cause. So until next time, that's all for me, Alan Dalton here at Wild Bird Acoustics. We'll see you again soon, folks. Take it easy. So that brings us to the end of another episode of Wild Bird Acoustics, and I hope you've enjoyed it. As always, you can find us on YouTube by simply searching for wild bird acoustics. We do have a mailing list also, and if you want to be part of that folks, you can drop us an email at Wild Bird acoustics@gmail.com. Now all feedback is greatly received here at the podcast. And if you'd like to write review of the podcast, you can do so at the buzzsprout header page. In addition, if you'd like to make a small financial donation to the podcast, you can do so using the buy me a Coffee button, and you'll find that also on the Buzzsprout header page. We will be back in a couple of weeks with more from wild bird acoustics. Until then, take it easy, folks, and as always, don't be afraid to get out into the field and relax and just listen to the wildlife out there. Maybe even do a little bit of field recording of your own. We'll talk to you soon, folks. Take it easy. That's all from Wild Bird Acoustics.