Doing nest inspections to check on chicks is a important part of my research here on Bonaire. I am looking at a lot of different things that may influence the reproductive success of the amazon pairs. So I need to know how the chicks are doing, what is causing them problems, if they have been predated or if they get to fledge.
Last year there were some of the inspections were fairly time consuming and I wanted to make them more efficient. In some cases this would involve putting in better anchor points to attach the rope too. This was not difficult. For the overhang nest there would be a lot more work. If you are unfamiliar with the overhang nest look back as some of my posts from last year and January 2007.
Last year getting to this nest involve either a dangerous ladder climb (with safety rope) or rope swinging like a pendulum in order to grab the rock and haul oneself towards the nest entrance. Both Rowan and I wanted to make access easier by simply drilling a few holes and placing some climbing bolts so that as you abseiled you could attach the rope to each successive bolt and descend beneath the overhang but when we did this we found it was slow and took a lot of effort.
As a result we came up with another idea. One now abseils with a long pole on the end of which is a caribeaner. Once at the right height you simply clip a bolt near the nest entrance and pull yourself in. Easier said than done but it works and is the simplest way we’ve come up with so far. These are the kind of things it is important too get sorted before the birds start prospecting. Once that happens we don’t want to be disturbing them.
We also fitted a infra red camera to the overhang nest. the nest has an entrance and a second hole which is to small for the birds but perfect for the camera. We’ll be following the development of the chicks and the behaviour of the breeding female as much as we can with this bit of technology. We’ll also be showing movies from inside this and other nests on our Bonaire parrot project website. http://www.parrotwatch.org. We hope you’ll take a look so you can see more of what we are doing.
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