Cook Islands: Endangered bird makes a comeback

By JOHN WALSBY

Worn to a frazzle by the domestic grind at home or the long hours and frustrations of work? One of the best tonics is to escape to the warmth, peace and beauty of a Pacific island. There you can relax on a beach of white coral sand arched by coconut palms, enjoy the company of brightly coloured reef fish as you idle away time in tepid blue waters, and gorge yourself on delicious tropical fruits and seafood.

Rarotonga has all this to offer and more, for the centre of this ancient volcanic island has a spectacular landscape of steep pointed cones and razor-backed ridges clad in dense tropical rainforest.

If you feel like an adventure into the lower slopes of the forest, there you can see many beautiful flowering plants and giant ferns and walk among the tangled hawsers of lianes hanging from the trees.

With the help of a guide you can also spy on one of the world's rarest birds, the kakerori, an insect-eater and nectar-sipper that is unusual in changing its plumage from honey yellow when young, to grey with a white breast when a mature adult three years old.

While life is idyllic for tourists and relaxed for the local Cook Islanders, the existence of this bird has been seriously threatened by a legacy of earlier tourists - 19th-century Europeans.

Eleven years ago the population of kakerori, the Rarotongan flycatcher, had collapsed to just 29 individuals and had it not been for a concerted conservation campaign by locals, with the help of a few New Zealanders, this bird would not have survived to see in the new millennium.

The main culprit in the decline of the kakerori has been the European ship rat, Rattus rattus, which travelled as a stowaway on most 19th-century sailing vessels. Wherever they anchored to refill their freshwater tanks and gather fresh provisions, the vermin jumped ship. In short order islands all around the world became infested exposing native birds, reptiles and other creatures to predatory pressures that they were ill-equipped to cope with.

Being an agile tree climber, the ship rat is easily able to reach the kakerori's neat nests of woven living moss, where it breaks open the eggs or kills the helpless chicks.

It is certain the rat is the main culprit, for closely related flycatchers on other rat-infested islands in the South Pacific are either similarly rare or extinct, while on three islands that are free of rats the local flycatchers are still common.

On Rarotonga, kakerori had been annihilated across most of the island and the last few survivors were restricted to one small patch of upland native forest that extended over three adjacent family titles.

The generosity of all three extended families has allowed this last bastion of the kakerori to be set aside for the bird's protection as the Takitumu Conservation Area, where guides now take small groups of tourists into the reserve to see the birds and the work being done to save them.

Each year since its creation there has been intensive rat control throughout the reserve before and during the spring-summer breeding season.

An equally important protection measure has been to locate new nests and wrap the trunks of the trees in which they are built with broad, shiny metal bands which prevent rats climbing up to attack the chicks. Fortunately for visitors, the kakerori is both inquisitive and highly territorial. So while the expectation of seeing a rare bird in dense forest would normally be low, kakerori make the whole spotting exercise easy by first announcing their presence with a bright, distinctive call and then by briefly emerging from cover to check out the interlopers into their territory. They usually hang around for only a few minutes, but are frequently obliging in perching close enough to be photographed.

Kakerori only raise one clutch of one or two eggs each year, but it is a long-lived bird and the programme has been so successful that the population had recovered to more than 200 by the end of last season.

By world standards, this is still considered to be an extremely low number for a species' survival, but it represents a great success considering the short time the recovery programme has been running.

On guided trips, arranged through the TCA's Avarua office, visitors are assured of good sightings of the kakerori and other forest birds, and are also introduced to the local native plants and some of their traditional medicinal and culinary uses.

The tours include lunch and transport to and from your hotel if required, and it is satisfying to learn that any profits are shared between the campaign to protect the birds and helping to maintain the reserve status of Takitumu for future generations of kakerori.