Endangered chick’s brutal, ‘heart-breaking’ death caught on video, Hawaii expert says
An endangered baby bird nesting on tropical Kauai was hours from being able to fly when it was brutally killed — and its “heart-breaking” death was caught on video, Hawaii officials said.
That’s how researchers who were studying the Hawaiian petrel chick know a feral cat attacked the fledgling animal in November, eating it and leaving its remains behind, Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources said in a news release this week.
In the video, the cat could be seen breaching the burrow and pulling out the fully-grown chick, officials said.
The Kauai Endangered Seabird Recovery Project had been keeping tabs on the satellite-tagged bird with a camera hidden in its forest burrow. Researchers said their goal was to discover the petrel’s first oceanic wintering grounds.
“It was heart-breaking to find this healthy chick torn apart by a cat, especially when we saw the tracks of the other two birds that were satellite tagged, one of which has now flown more than 5,000 miles since it fledged and left its nest,” André Raine, the coordinator of the project, said in a statement released by state officials.
Sheri Mann, the Kaua‘i Branch Manager for the Hawaii’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife, said the bird was one of three baby petrels that had been tagged in remote burrows on Nov. 12 “to learn more about this poorly known species’ post-fledging movement patterns.”
Researchers said the same feral cat was caught on video at five other burrows in the same remote area, and the cat is blamed for one other chick death.
“Predator control teams were notified, and they continue to search for the elusive cat as well as other predators,” the officials said in the news release.
State officials shared photos showing the rare birds on Facebook Tuesday. Officials also posted photos that apparently show the cat suspected of killing the young bird.
Mann said “the only other petrel chick tagged previously by KESRP had been tracked to the waters off Guam, 3,700 miles away, leaving us to believe this species is a strong flier with vast areas it flies to across the Pacific.”
The Hawaiian petrel has no native mammal predators and is relatively defenseless against them, according to state officials.
“On Kauai they are now restricted to the most remote, mountainous areas on the island and are in serious decline,” the researchers said. “Causes include powerline collisions and introduced predators, such as cats.”
Raine is still monitoring the two surviving petrels.
“Kauai is a ‘Noah’s Ark’ for many endangered bird species,” Raine said. “Having feral cats loose on the landscape is not good for the cats, which risk disease and an untimely death, and it’s also terrible for our native wildlife.”
State officials encouraged locals to help manage feral cat populations on the island chain.
The Hawaii Invasive Species Council describes feral cats as a “wild-living variant of the common pet cat, introduced to Hawaii by Europeans” with “established populations on all eight of the main Hawaiian islands.”
The council said Hawaiians can combat the threat of feral cats by spaying or neutering their cats, keeping pet cats indoors, micro-chipping house cats and refraining from feeding feral cats.
“It would have been nice to see that bird flying out to sea instead of in a mangled heap in front of its burrow,” Raine said, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 9:15 PM with the headline "Endangered chick’s brutal, ‘heart-breaking’ death caught on video, Hawaii expert says."
