Kestrel, pink pigeon, parakeet: three birds back from the brink

Mauritius lost the dodo, and with it sixteen of its twenty-eight native land bird species. It kept, by a whisker, three species once thought lost: the Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon and the echo parakeet. Theirs is the story of a rescue carried out bird by bird, and it can be read today in the forests of the south-west, in the Bambous Mountains, and on a coral islet off Mahébourg.

It all began in 1976. That year, the Forestry Service and the International Council for Bird Preservation, now BirdLife International, created the Gerald Durrell Endemic Wildlife Sanctuary, also known as the Black River aviaries, to save the threatened birds and bats of Mauritius and Rodrigues. The kestrel, the pink pigeon and the parakeet are bred there in captivity. All three species were saved from extinction by intensive management of their wild populations, combined with the release of birds hatched or reared in the aviaries. The National Parks and Conservation Service funds its running; the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation provides extensive technical assistance and manages the collections. The site, a scientific area, remains closed to the public.

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The kestrel, the last bird of prey

The Mauritius kestrel is the island’s last bird of prey. Creamy white breast marked with black, chestnut-brown head, it hunts geckos, dragonflies, cockroaches, crickets, small birds and mice. It nests on cliffs, in hollow trees and in nest boxes; the female lays two to five eggs, incubated for thirty days, and the young fledge at 38 or 39 days.

Once found across the whole island, it declined throughout the nineteenth century, and then the use of DDT against malaria, in the 1950s, all but wiped it out. In 1974 only four individuals were known in the wild, and it was then the rarest bird in the world. It is today the national bird of the Republic of Mauritius. Its recovery has been anything but a straight line: there were about 700 kestrels in 2000, around 600 in 2009, 362 in 2012 or 2013, and today more than 300 are counted, in two populations, one in and around Black River Gorges, the other in the Bambous Mountains. A shortage of nesting cavities and introduced predators (rats, mongooses, cats and macaques) remain its enemies.

The pink pigeon has short brown wings, a long tail, pale pink plumage, and a pinkish-red bill and legs. It is the last endemic pigeon of Mauritius. It lays one or two white eggs, incubated for fourteen days, and the young leave the nest after four weeks. Once reduced to a dozen known individuals, in a small grove of cryptomerias near Piton Savanne, it numbered about 400 birds in 2000, 400 to 450 in 2012 or 2013, and today exceeds 400.

The echo parakeet is a bright emerald green, with a black ring around the neck and a blue tinge to the crown, nape and long tail; the adult male has a bright red bill, the female a dark one. It is the island’s last endemic parrot, the sole survivor of the six species once found in the Mascarenes. In 1986 only eight to twelve were known; there were 120 in 2000, more than 500 in 2011, and about 800 today. Its recovery programme ranks among the most successful in the world for a parrot. One threat remains, a viral disease of the beak and feathers, for which no treatment is known.

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Île aux Aigrettes, an ark of coral

Off Mahébourg, Île aux Aigrettes is a coral islet of about twenty-five hectares. Despite four centuries of degradation, it carries the best-preserved native vegetation of any coral island in the Mascarenes, and the last fragment of coastal forest rich in ebony: bois de bœuf, bois d’ébène and bois chandelle find refuge here. Declared a nature reserve in 1965, it nonetheless continued to deteriorate under the onslaught of invasive plants. The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation began restoring it in 1985; between 1996 and 2000, funding from the Global Environment Facility made it possible to eradicate rats and restore the islet on a large scale.

The results can be measured. Eighty per cent of the islet’s forest has been restored and needs only periodic weeding, in which free-roaming giant tortoises lend a hand. The island holds 20 per cent of the world’s pink pigeons, a population of Mauritius fodies has been established there, and the Mauritius olive white-eye, the most threatened of the island’s endemic birds, lives there too. It can be visited only with a guide, after a boat crossing from the south-east coast.

To see the three survivors on the main island, the paths are well known: Black River Gorges, the aviaries of Ebony Forest at Chamarel, Ferney Valley in the Bambous Mountains. None of these birds is yet out of danger. But each one, glimpsed at a bend in a trail, shows that an extinction foretold is not inevitable.