I wrote a blog a while ago about the Chatham islands, and how I was looking forward to visiting Rangatira for a seabird translocation project. It’s taken me a while to get around to writing about it! I’ve been using time in lockdown to revisit a massive backlog of photographs from various adventures over the past 2 years…they’ve piled up on me a bit.
Rangatira is home to tūturuatu – Shore plovers. Once widespread throughout Aotearoa, introduced predators have restricted their range to remote islands in the Chathams, and they’re one of the world’s rarest shorebirds. They’re one of the first birds you encounter when you land, filling the air with their little peeps as they scurry across the wave platforms.
These wee birds were the reason we were on Rangatira – White-faced storm petrels. We needed to collect chicks for translocation to Mana Island – but they have to be at a particular stage of development for the translocation to work. This one was a bit too well developed! We spent a lot of time lying on the ground with our arms down burrows trying to find the right chicks. This attracted the ever-curious Black robins, who would hop around us in search of tasty bugs.
There were two birds I was especially keen to see – Black robins and Chatham Snipe! Seeing both species was relatively easy (they are pretty much everywhere), but getting nice photos was more of a challenge, and I spent nearly all of my free time working on it (see my instagram for more round bird photos!).
Rangatira is also home to rather large Rangatira spiders. I’m not the biggest big spider fan (I like tiny spiders, like jumping spiders!), but I can admit that they are very impressive (from afar), and I’m happy to see them (over there) and I checked my boots every morning to make sure they hadn’t taken up residence overnight. They hadn’t.
This male did like Cathy’s toothbrush though.
Visiting Rangatira was a blast, and I thoroughly enjoyed lying on the ground every day, getting dirt in my eyebrows and shoving my arm down hundreds of tiny holes looking for the right size storm petrels! I’ve bobbed around Rangatira in a zodiac before (on an extremely rough day, we got soaked), which was my introduction to the Chatham islands after a rough morning around the Pyramid. I’ve been longing to actually visit Rangatira properly since them, so this trip was the realisation of that dream.
Big thanks to Cathy for having me along, and all the team for a fabulous time! The translocation to Mana was a great success – you can find out more about it here. Christine Jacobs did a write-up about the whole translocation process (although the Rangatira photos are actually from the 2019 trip!), which you can see on her site here.
