Just when things were coming to an end here on Montserrat for me as a volunteer, another adventure took off! I got the opportunity to spend a week with our sister mountain chicken project on Dominica, run by ZSL. The project members on Dominica have put a lot of work into setting up a facility for captured wild frogs...
So the frogs are now safely in the forest. Now what? Well we need to find them of course. Some of you may remember this time last year with the last set of frogs when we started the radio-tracking. Basically all the frogs we have released this year are implanted with tiny transmitters which give out a signal. The...
The first release of captive-bred mountain chickens back into the wild.
Today was a very special day. At about 2pm we all headed to the holding facility and began the task of getting a group of 17 frogs ready for release. Javier removed the stitches from each in turn, we took pre-release biometric data, checked the frequency and strength of...
We are now into our third and last month of radio-tracking so it comes to no surprise that we are starting to see failed transmitters. Batteries are starting to run out and frogs are free to hop off into the sunset. Of course the team will continue for the next month to radio-track those that are still beeping and...
Having had a few nights of peace and quiet in the temporary ponds, it was time to release the first half of the captive-bred mountain chickens into their new home. The team mobilised to get the chosen frogs ready for release. They needed to be identified, swabbed and have the transmitters checked for the radio tracking before being placed...
Things are really getting back into the swing of things as we prepare for the next release which is due at the end of this month. However, before we could concentrate on our new group of release frogs we had some guests visit Montserrat to take part in the third quarterly Project Steering Committee meeting. Dr. Reginald Thomas, the...
A bit of local news. As part of their celebrations of Her Majesty The Queen's Diamond Jubilee the Earl and Countess of Essex visited Montserrat today. The schedule consisted of a visit to the Public Market, an opening of the new museum and a Steel Pan Celebration Concert performed by the local schools. Our little island shined and the...
It’s the end of the 3 months radio-tracking and I can’t believe the time has gone by so fast and its time to head home!
The last two weeks have been really hectic and so seemed to pass much faster. We supported ‘Save the Frogs Day’ an event organised for an American charity to help raise awareness of frogs, also...
A very Happy New Year to all! 2011 was an amazing 12 months for the mountain chickens in Montserrat and the Mountain Chicken Project Team and we are very excited about 2012. And what better way to start the year than another release! That's right folks, more mountain chickens are currently winging their way to Montserrat. Imagine...flying chickens! The...