Hi, let me tell you a bit about the pigeons and the job. The birds were heading for the evolutionary eternal graveyard in the 1970s after long term introduced and invasive predator species and habitat loss. Then a special man named Gerald Durrell, founder of Jersey Zoo and Conservation Centre, decided action had to be taken. Along with the Pink Pigeons, several other species have been brought back from the brink: The Mauritian Kestrel, now safety up in numbers, and the charasmatic Echo Parakeet. Most of these bird populations have been boosted up to around 300 individuals through intensive breeding and supplementary feeding. The next step is to get to a position where the species can survive independantly, like the Kestrel and can be left alone and marveled and monitored from a far.
I'm based at Pigeon Wood, which in the 1970s was the last stronghold for the handful of remaining wild birds. On the Monday of my first working week I climbed 'Annabel', a 14 metre Cryptomera everygreen tree which Gerald Durrell climbed when he promised to himself to save the Pink Pigeons from their doomed fate. Of course, me being me, I was petrified but the moment was too great to miss. The view was fantastic, the canopy opening up towards the sea, and it lit a fire somewhere inside spurring me to do my best in my part of the project, to reach Durrell's dream and to one day see the pigeons living independantly with a safe future.
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