The past four months have been epic beyond compare for the team in Montserrat: laughing, crying and sweating their way from January to May.
January saw the captive-bred critically endangered mountain chicken return to Montserrat. The release of these precious animals happened over several days, and with great success. After the release the team spent six nights a week, every...
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...
A little over a month ago, frog 120 suddenly fell off the grid together with his companion 110. We searched the whole of Sweetwater up and down, day and night, but the frogs seemed as swept off the face of the earth. The only sign of them ever being present was the steady beeping from 120's frequency out the...
Pond construction - update 1
As part of the mission to save the critically endangered mountain chicken, our first milestone is to bring the captive bred mountain chickens back to Montserrat, as part of a reintroduction programme. During the run up to this very exciting moment of being able to release healthy, disease free animals back into their natural habitat,...
I may be a little fella, but my heart is as big as Texas! If you've been to Montserrat, you know there is a concert going on in the trees from dusk till dawn. The majority of the choir members are tree frogs: Eleutherodactylus johnstonei.
One reason for the tree frogs' persisting abundance is their ability to withstand the chytrid...
With the release completed the focus now was to train the team remaining in Montserrat in everything they would need to monitor the released frogs successfully. This included a lot of frog catching practice in the field, practice in tracking radio-tagged frogs, learning more about the biology of these animals: life cycle, behaviour etc. and learning how to map...
The crusaders
The last couple of weeks have run pretty smoothly in terms of the radio tracking, most of the frogs are staying close to ghaut and their last locations. There are only a couple for frogs that have challenged us to find them.
667 this individual, has gone up on the east bank of the ghaut, high up and likes...