The cost of cats...

Just back from 6 weeks in the field at Juan de Nova...Quite amazing really! Much of our time was spent trapping cats (don't ask what we did with them!) and quantifying sooty tern predation. Cats are a real problem there as we found that just one cat killed up to 10 birds per night, with only half of them being eaten! The cats apparently like to kill just for the fun of it. There are 2 million pairs of sooty tern breeding at Juan de Nova so a few dead birds is not a problem for them, however it is interesting to note that no other species of seabird breed there despite the fact that on nearby islands up to six other species can sustain populations! Lots of work to do now with all the data that we collected. ....