Mouse attacks continue on Marion Island’s threatened Wandering Albatrosses

The May 2022 wounded Wandering Albatross chick

South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean is one of only three known islands where introduced House Mice are known to have taken to attacking and killing albatrosses – the other two being Gough in the South Atlantic and Midway in the North Pacific.  Attacks by mice were first observed on Marion in 2003, with chicks of the Vulnerable Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans being the target.  Since then, the three other albatross species and three of the island’s petrel assemblage that breed on the island have been definitely affected, including attacks directed at adults for some of them.  As a consequence, the Mouse-Free Marion Project is working towards eradicating the island’s mice in 2024 by an aerial drop of poison bait.

Another view of the same bird; photographs by Lucy Smyth

Researchers based on the island continue to make observations of mouse attacks on birds; the latest being of a downy Wandering Albatross chick showing a wound on its right flank caused by mice.  The bird was photographed on 26 May by ornithological field assistant Lucy Smyth in the Goney Plain long-term monitoring colony for Wanderers, first set up in the mid-1980s; one of three on Marion’s east coast.  The observation confirming mouse attacks are continuing on the island supports the necessity of removing the mice as soon as is feasible.

With thanks to Maëlle Connan.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 June 2022