Abbott’s Booby

(Papasula abbotti)

The Abbott’s booby is an ancient species, a true oceanic bird, living at sea and coming ashore only to breed. It nests only on Christmas Island (a territory of Australia), a fifty-million-year-old extinct volcano rising out of the Indian Ocean, ten degrees south of the equator. Abbott’s boobies are impressive-looking birds, with bright white heads and necks, long dark-tipped bills, and narrow black wings. Growing as large as thirty-one inches in length, they are the largest of the boobies—some call them the “jumbo jet” of the boobies.

These boobies have a life span of up to forty years, and the young birds do not start to breed until they are about eight years old. They have one of the longest breeding cycles of any bird (fifteen months), so breeding occurs at two-year intervals. They nest in the tops of trees, laying just one egg.

Their numbers began to decline when, in the 1960s, phosphate mining began in full force on Christmas Island. In order to mine the mineral, it was necessary to clear large strips of the primary forest—interfering with the boobies’ breeding, since they nest in the tops of forest trees. These tall trees often grew over the richest phosphate deposits, so that Abbott’s boobies were in direct conflict with mining interests. The boobies have thus lost the greater part of their historic breeding habitat. Their population is now estimated at about twenty-five hundred breeding pairs.

Although the local government as well as the mining company tried to monitor and protect the habitat and nests, the Abbott’s booby continued to decline. Finally in 1977, Don Merton, well established as an island restoration expert by then, was sent to Christmas Island to advise the Australian government and the British Phosphate Commission on wildlife conservation matters. He spent two years with his young family on Christmas Island and ultimately helped convince the government to create the island’s first biological reserve, a four-thousand-acre national park built in 1980—one of the largest and least modified raised tropical island rain forest ecosystems to be protected anywhere. Another conservation initiative on Christmas Island was the plan for a comprehensive program monitoring the breeding and conservation of Abbott’s booby.

Destroyed Habitat and Chicks in Peril

By the mid-1980s, it was estimated that some 33 percent of the habitat formerly used by the boobies had already been destroyed, and mining activities had created at least seventy clearings in the forests. Not only had this deprived the boobies of nest sites, but it was found that birds nesting near the clearings suffered from wind turbulence. Sadly, this caused unfledged Abbott’s booby chicks to be blown from their nesting sites. Strong winds can sometimes blow fledgling and even adult boobies from branches, and if a bird falls to the forest floor it will die unless it manages to climb up through the vegetation. These birds can take off from the ground, but with great difficulty. They need sufficient wind from the right direction and a clear “runway” to get airborne. Unless found and rescued, they are normally doomed.

Ultimately, it was decided that the best way to protect the boobies was to protect and expand the island forests, by returning precious topsoil and replanting areas cleared for mining. Hopefully this would reduce the wind turbulence that is so detrimental to nesting boobies. Thousands of seedlings were raised and planted, using funds from the mining companies negotiated as part of their agreements.

The Restoration Program Comes Under Attack

Shockingly, three years later, the area given top priority by wildlife biologists was selected by the government for an immigration reception and processing center. Not only that, but the section of the mine site that had already been reforested was cut down. This has sparked a great deal of anger in the conservation community, particularly among those who have worked so hard on this restoration program.

The National Parks Australia Council has denounced the plan as “illegal” and requested that work on the site should cease immediately since it did not have proper approvals. “There are more suitable sites on the island that do not have such severe environmental impacts, and already have infrastructure provided,” said Andrew Cox, president of the council.

And Monash University biologist Peter Green, one of those originally involved in the Abbott’s booby monitoring program and with a long association with the island, commented that “the Abbott’s booby birds were the focus of a commonwealth-funded rehabilitation program, which had been taking place at the site of the new detention center. And now,” he concluded, “they have just put a bulldozer through it.”

Not only this, but the government is actually negotiating new deals with the mining company. In 1988, the federal government had ruled that there would be no further clearing of rain forest on Christmas Island; the company is now appealing that ruling, and has recently sought permission to expand its lease to include new areas of old-growth forest. “It’s crazy,” said Andrew Cox. “Christmas Island is a jewel in the environmental crown of Australia [with] the world’s only population of Abbott’s booby birds and other endemic creatures … and we should protect it.” It’s one of very few raised tropical island ecosystems remaining anywhere.

For now, the Abbott’s booby numbers seem secure. But this latest environmental blow could prove harmful.

The Orchard Nursing Home and Orphanage

Meanwhile, for the past sixteen years, amid all this Christmas Island turbulence, Max and Beverly Orchard have been rescuing the island’s injured and orphaned endangered birds. Max has been a wildlife ranger for more than thirty years, working initially in Tasmania. He and Beverly have spent most of their adult lives rescuing and caring for orphaned or injured animals, with a special interest in endangered species. When they were in Tasmania, they used to care for wombats, wallabies, and Tasmanian devils.

I have talked with them on the phone, and the warmth and passion of their caring personalities reaches me all the way from Christmas Island. Beverly explained that every time a big storm hits the island during nesting season, many of the young ones fall out of their nests. It’s during the monsoon season that there are so many casualties—that’s March through August. But the injured and orphaned keep coming until Christmas. Visitors to the park and local hikers find the birds and are always guided to Max and Beverly. Nestlings grow exceedingly slowly, remaining in their nests for about a year, so they are vulnerable for a very long period.

Beverly Orchard is the “heart and soul” of the operation, according to her husband, Max. “She can get along with the fiercest of them.” (Max Orchard)

When they arrive, “they are often dehydrated, starving and completely depleted—but they can be resilient,” said Beverly. The Orchards take the little ones and those that are injured into their home and put them into small nesting boxes. Then Beverly nurses them, giving them water and small fish from the huge stock that they keep in the freezer. She soaks the fish extra-long in water so they’re easier for the young ones to swallow. If birds are injured, Max will try to heal them—say, trying to repair a broken leg. One time he managed to surgically remove a fishhook from an Abbott’s booby gut.

Of course, inevitably, a number of her patients die. But Beverly is amazed by the boobies’ resiliency. “We’ve had a number of them come in that I didn’t think had any chance of making it,” she said. “Some couldn’t even lift up their heads.” When she left them for the night, she’d felt “sure they were breathing their last breaths.” But after her nursing and a night’s rest, she’d check on them in the morning “and they’d be peering out at me, talking excitedly—hungry for breakfast.”

Nesting in Plastic Chairs

Each patient has its own nest—an “old plastic office chair” kept outside under Max and Beverly’s carport. They realized that this was the most comfortable spot, especially as feeding time can be very messy. At any given time, there are dozens of plastic chair nests lined up out there. After an injured or orphaned booby has been nursed back to health or come to a certain stage of maturity in its box inside the house, Beverly and Max try to transition it to a plastic chair as soon as possible.

Some of Max and Beverly’s family of juvenile boobies waiting for breakfast.(Bev Orchard)

Young patient recuperating on its office chair nest in the Orchards’ carport.(Dr. Janos Hennicke)

In the wild, boobies nest in extremely high trees. “We try to replicate what happens in the wild,” said Max, “but there’s no way we can replicate the nest. We figured out that the best plan was to give them each a plastic chair, and we feed them fish and squid—the same kind of food we believe their parents would feed them in the wild.” They fly out of their chair nest every day for a few hours, always coming back for feeding times.

“They are usually quite friendly and cooperative birds,” said Max, “but woe be it to any booby who sits on the wrong chair nest!”

There Are Boobies and Boobies

“They all get the same name—Eric,” said Max. This is based on the Monty Python skit “Fish License,” in which John Cleese plays a man who names all his pets Eric. But the boobies definitely differ from one another.

“Each one has its own personality,” said Beverly. “Some of them like to be held and are quite smoochy. They are very conversational birds and like to talk with their parents, so when it’s feeding time, I always go out and talk to them. ‘How are you?’ ‘How was your day?’—that kind of thing. They all start squawking back—they all get very excited to talk with me.” They have a croaking-bellow sound that Max jokingly noted sounds like someone getting sick—“kind of a retching sound.”

“We try not to handle them too much,” said Beverly. “Once the babies get their feathers, we put them out on a chair and don’t handle them any longer. This way when they leave us, they won’t be tempted to land on boats and visit with other humans.”

Max calls Beverly the “heart and soul” of the operation. “She can get along with the fiercest of them—the ones who come in screeching and strutting menacingly,” said Max. “Before long, she has them all calmed down and practically cooing when they see her.”

Over the years, this amazing couple have rescued close to five hundred Abbott’s boobies in all. They mature slowly—it’s about a year until maturity—and those the Orchards deal with are usually in recovery, so their development is even slower. Some stay nested on their plastic chairs with Max and Beverly for up to two years. And then, finally, they are ready for life in the wild.

“The day comes when they are finally mature and they take off, and that’s the last you’ll see them,” said Beverly. Fortunately, though, before they are ready to go the boobies have a good-bye ritual so Max and Beverly can prepare for the departure: “One day they will come back to the chair, but not eat,” said Beverly. “And they will suddenly be especially talkative—as if they have a lot to say. This is when we know they have found a food source—they are finally self-reliant. Perhaps they are telling us about what they’ve found or thanking us or just saying good-bye. We have no way of knowing” she added. “Then they’ll sleep peacefully through the night on the nest, say a final good-bye in the morning, and take off for good.”

“They become part of our family,” said Max. “They’re completely dependent on you and then they go off forever. It’s a mixed feeling. You’re happy that another one is returned to the wild—this is why we do all this work. So of course you hope it all goes well for them, but it’s hard never seeing them again after they’ve been a part of your family for so long.”

Max told me that apart from their habitat problems, the latest threat to the boobies is the high number of nearby fishing operations that are depleting their food resources as well as posing a direct threat through nets and long-line fishhooks. The Abbott’s booby may be saved from extinction for now, said Max, “but we need to remain vigilant.”

This adult cahow climbed on biologist Jeremy Madeiros’s head before taking off. Jeremy’s head was the best perch this cahow could find in the treeless habitat of Castle Harbor, Bermuda. (Andrew Dobson)