Man in volumous check shirt points grey sausage at a rare Montserrat oriole. I can see the Daily Mail headline already. Well this is me at work struggling to record the song of one of the most endangered birds in the World. Montserrat orioles are endemic to the island which gave them their name. Struggling to survive increasing human activity on that British Dependency island, bird organisations put effort into restoring the birds tropical forest habitat, only for the islands main volcano to erupt and destroy most of that forest. In 2000 a team went to Montserrat and brought back 8 adults to Jersey Zoo in an attempt to start a breeding programme, something which had never been done before. It was successful and Andrew Owen who was one of the original team now is curator of birds at Chester Zoo where they have 3 adults, including the breeding pair in front of me. The male is a stunning bird. Photographs show a black and yellow bird. In real life however the gold is a shimmering luxuriant golden yellow. Stunning. I wonder what they then thought of my plumage..........
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