Rare Saddlebacks Survive On Islands

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30760, 26 May 1965, Page 14

Rare Saddlebacks Survive On Islands

“The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND, May 25. A survey party of 11 organised by the Wildlife Division of the Department of Internal Affairs has returned from the Hen and Chicken Islands with encouraging observations on the survival of the rare North Island saddleback. The party camped on a rock i ledge 50ft above the shore on | Hen Island for 10 days and ! made surveys of plant and animal life on the Hen, Middle and East Chicken Islands. Bird calls recorded by Mr J. L. Kendrick of the Wildlife Division, were used to attract the birds to the observers moving in spaced lines over, the island. Until last year the North Island saddleback lived only on Hen Island. In January,!

1964, 23 birds were caught there and released on Middle Chicken Island by Mr D. V. Merton, a field officer in the survey section of the Wildlife Division. Last week the team was taken to the Chickens by the naval launch Maroro and a systematic survey was made of about two-thirds of the island. Eighteen birds were sighted, 11 of them banded adult birds and seven birds that have been bred on the island since last year. Three other saddlebacks were plotted by their calls. No saddlebacks were found on East Chicken. At Sail Rock bird calls were projected from the Maroro over a loud-hailer but no saddleback calls were heard.