One of the main premises for our expedition is to plot the recovery of the island since the removal of sheep and the world's largest island rat eradication programme. Our work mainly concentrates on how this has benefited and changed the island’s plant and invertebrate communities, as these changes will have flow-on effects to the larger vertebrate species on the island. However, we cannot help but see for ourselves how the removal of the introduced animals has helped the smaller birds on the island. We are treated daily to the sound and sight of the friendly wee pipits (I will do a video of them soon), but never expected to see so many of the diminutive Campbell Island Teal.

These tiny ducks are flightless and were once confined to the rocky Dent Island, off the west coast of Campbell Island. Thanks to a captive breeding programme and DOC’s successful eradication of rats from Campbell Island in 2001, after their reintroduction to the island in 2004, the teal population seems to be increasing in leaps and bounds. As Alex James and I have sampled many of the island’s streams, we have been privileged enough to see teal in many of these systems. But I never thought I would also regularly see them around base camp, on the track to the wharf, and swimming amongst the kelp at the wharf. A very wonderful thing indeed.

[Shelley McMurtrie]