Other bits and bobs

In my previous blogs I have covered most of the main things that the project is doing for the mountain chicken but for sake of length I omitted some things out. So now I can tell you about some of the other bits and bobs relating to mountain chickens.

On Montserrat the first event that diminished the mountain chicken population was the volcano on the island. This erupted in 1996 and has erupted periodically since then. This initially destroyed large amounts of habitat and although there has been a lot of ash fall since, it does not appear to have had any serious impact on the remaining mountain chickens but certainly wouldn't have helped. However, there is not a lot you can do about a volcano and fortunately activity has died down quite a bit.

Aerial view of Montserrat with the volcano

As well as chytrid, invasive species have had an impact on mountain chickens. Invasive species are those that are not native to an island but have been introduced by humans. On Montserrat there are rats, which have been seen to bite and injure mountain chickens and potentially predate small frogs; feral pigs and goats damage the habitat and cane toads which compete with mountain chickens for food and are also a reservoir for chytrid. One of the studies that is going to be done on Montserrat is to investigate the impacts of rats on mountain chickens: e.g. do the frogs do worse in areas with lots of rats? The findings will be used to inform future management and actions.

Frog logger attached to tree for recording calling mountain chickens (Photo: S-L Adams)

Another survey technique we have been using are remote surveying devices called ‘frog loggers’. These are recording devices that record any mountain chickens calling using microphones and recording onto memory cards. These are helpful as can give information on activity and distribution without having to spend lots of time walking around. The only thing is that they can only tell you about male mountain chickens as it is only the males that call. Below is a video of a male mountain chicken calling to a female: