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London (pte049/26.07.2005/16:24) - Conservationists and scientists are warning that a strange behaviour from carnivorous mice may endanger the bird population on Gough Island in the South Atlantic.
Hundreds of thousands of overgrown mice are feasting on live, nest-bound seabird chicks, which could lead to extinction for some bird species.
Although the albatross chicks are 1 metre tall and 250 times larger than their strange new predators, the mice seem undaunted by the size difference. They attack the chicks' undersides - sometimes with between 10 and 15 mice doing the feasting - and then leave the bird with open wounds, from which the birds then die.
More than one million petrel, albatross and shearwater chicks are being devoured a year, say experts from the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) http://www.rspb.org.uk/ .
Geoff Hilton, a senior RSPB research biologist, said that before the mice arrived - last century on shipwrecks and whaling boats - Gough Island was naturally free of such predators, making it an ideal place for species like albatrosses to nest.
The chicks, which are nest-bound for about eight months, and almost immobile, are left alone for long periods of time while their parents are off in search of food.
Researchers say that about 60 per cent (about 700,000) Atlantic petrel chicks died on the island before fledging in 2000 and 2001, probably due to mouse attacks. And it seems that the problem is local.
"There are mice on other South Atlantic islands but Gough is the only site where this is known to be happening," said Ross Wanless from the University of Cape Town's Percy FitzPatrick Institute. "Once one mouse has attacked a chick, the blood seems to attract others."
"Gough Island hosts an astonishing community of seabirds and this catastrophe could make many extinct within decades," Hilton warned.
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