Call of the wild
Birds lured with decoy sex appeal
ANIMAL attraction sometimes needs a helping hand.
In an unusual bid to attract seabirds to remote Scottish islands, hidden loudspeakers are being used to broadcast their mating cries.
The RSPB has spent several years running a £1 million project to rid the Shiant Isles of black rats which plundered chicks and eggs.
Now the bird charity wants to encourage seabirds such as the storm petrel and Manx shearwater to breed there.
Loudspeakers have been concealed among the boulders in the hope that passing birds will swoop in to look for a potential mate.
RSPB communications and conservation project officer Stuart Benn said: ‘It’s like a decoy, fooling them into thinking that there’s already a colony and they might find a mate.’
The Shiants, four miles off Lewis in the Hebrides, are one of the most important breeding colonies for European seabirds – particularly puffins, but also guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and shags.
In April 2012, around 3,600 rats – believed to have come ashore after an 18th Century shipwreck – had overrun the islands. As part of the Shiant Isles Recovery Project, the charity laid 1,180 bait stations to eradicate them.
Dr Charlie Main, senior project manager for the Shiants, said: ‘There’s loads of brilliant natural habitat for storm petrels and Manx shearwaters – really bouldery scree slopes. We have 16 tiny speakers that play calls recorded from other sites. The calls must draw them in and pique their interest. They fly around really close to the speaker and land.’
The solar-powered 2in speakers broadcast the petrel’s soft purring trill and the Manx shearwater’s loud strangled wailing between 10pm and 4am.
Storm petrels are a little smaller than a blackbird but they are speedy fliers and spend months on end far out to sea.
They return to islands to breed, landing at night to avoid predatory gulls and skuas. Manx shearwaters are bigger but many are still caught and killed by gulls.
Dr Main said: ‘Success is by no means guaranteed. We’d be over the moon if we got petrels but the project has been incredibly worthwhile because of the benefit to the 62,000 pairs of nesting puffins.’