Mark Frazer – just back from seabird work in the Antipodes islands volunteers with NFMV on the Fiji Petrel Project.
Mark Frazer has joined NatureFiji-MareqetiViti as a volunteer working with Fiji Petrel officer Eleazer O’Connor on Gau island.
Together they will set up the telemetry work for landed Petrels. Mark is a seabird ecologist with the Wildlife Management International Ltd and will be involved in the technical training of the Gau island Fiji Petrel team.
Initially they will be working on landed Collared Petrels with the objective of finding out where they are nesting on Gau. Should any Fiji Petrels be landed or land in villages of their own accord, they too will be fitted with a transmitter.
The Fiji Petrel project has developed the technique of landing Collared Petrels as they fly into their nesting sites at night by spotlighting at selected hilltops.
Those which show signs of breeding such as a brood patch (for incubating the egg) or have mud on their beaks or claws indicating they have been burrowing are fitted with a 3.5 g transmitter.
So far three Collared Petrels have been fitted with transmitters after 3 weeks of fieldwork. The fine weather has not helped as it allows the petrels to fly very high well above the spotlight.
In rainy and cloudy weather, the birds become confused and drop down to the spotlight.
After the transmitter is fitted, team members are stationed on 2 or 3 hilltops with receivers which will track the petrel when it makes a return journey to the nesting burrow. The burrows are deep in the forests of Gau and are very difficult to locate.