An infra-red scope for assessing sooty shearwater burrow occupancy

The Kia Mau Te Titi Mo Ake Tonu Atu (Keep the Titi Forever) research programme aims to investigate the sustainable harvesting of titi (sooty shearwater) chicks as well as monitoring mainland colonies which are threatened due to predation from introduced mammals. An infra-red burrowscope is used to determine breeding success and to assess population trends and is fundamental to the whole research programme. There have been preliminary indications that the burrowscope fails to detect some titi chicks in their burrows. This pilot study illustrated the potential complexity of burrow systems and gave strong indications that the current burrowscope methodology and analysis of burrowscope data for detecting titi eggs, young chicks and pre-fledging chicks is inaccurate and imprecise.