Black parrot breeding season begins |09 January 2017

The 2016/17 black parrot breeding season, which is the eighth consecutive season to be monitored by SIF (Seychelles Islands Foundation), has started very well and looks to be a promising year. The team were overjoyed to discover the first two eggs in a nest in the Vallée de Mai on November 25. This is quite early as we usually start seeing the first eggs in mid- to late December. Since this discovery the team have found a total of 12 eggs in six different nests in the Vallée de Mai and Fond Ferdinand. There is still a number of promising potential nest sites which are seeing a lot of parrot activity and will hopefully lead to more active nests in the next few weeks.

This is a fantastic start to the season, especially when compared to last season which saw only three nests discovered in the whole season, none of which had a chick survive to fledging stage.

The team have also started mist-netting adult parrots with the new equipment sourced from a grant awarded to Team Leader Terance Payet by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. The new equipment has already allowed the team to catch and ring four previously un-ringed parrots, which is a great start to the season.

This takes the total number of parrots ringed by SIF to 191 and we hope to significantly increase this number by the end of the season.