Pelagic birding in Easter Island (Rapa Nui)
Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra), Easter Island © Claudio F. Vidal, Far South Expeditions
Chile’s offshore waters are known to be as one of the most productive oceanic regions on Earth, and you can prove this by taking a short pelagic trip off Valparaiso (or Quintero), where you are likely to encounter a myriad of tubenoses and other seabirds occurring in the cold-and-rich Humboldt Current, which flows along almost the entire length of Chile and continuing north towards Peru and Ecuador.
Chile has other offshore island dependencies which are truly excellent for pelagic birding. The Juan Fernandez Archipelago and its three associated islands (including the ‘Robinson Crusoe’), is one of them. Also the ‘Desventuradas’ Islands (San Felix and San Ambrosio)… but that’s another story! Probably, the least known of Chile’s pelagic hotspots is ‘Rapa Nui’ (or Easter Island, which was the name given by the Europeans who ‘discovered’ it in 1722).
The impressive Ahu Tongariki, Easter Island © Claudio F. Vidal, Far South Expeditions
Rapa Nui - this seemingly barren, triangular, volcanic rock, lying in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is readily accessible from Santiago de Chile, with many flights a week. Hundreds, and even thousands of tourists, focus their limited time in the island and visit the enigmatic giant stone statues (known as ‘moai’) which were carved during the centuries by the early and skilled inhabitants of the island.
Rapa Nui was once an island completely covered by palm trees and many landbirds were part its rich biodiversity inventory. The further environmental collapse caused by its inhabitants, as a result of centuries of deforestation and natural resources depletion, eventually led to the total extinction of all the landbirds and even the majority of its seabird colonies.
Kermadec Petrel (Pterodroma neglecta), Easter Island © Claudio F. Vidal, Far South Expeditions
The ‘motus’, as the locals called the small volcanic islets located in the south-western corner of the island, hold an outstanding number of pelagic birds; these ‘motus’ are likely to be one of the easiest places on Earth where you can find up to five Pterodroma or ‘gadfly’ petrels. The easiest and most common are the stockily-built Kermadec Petrel and the elegant Herald Petrel; the islets also hold small numbers of Phoenix Petrel, the newly-discovered Murphy’s Petrel (which breed in the main island too) and the recently-split Henderson’s Petrel (formerly considered the dark morph of Herald Petrel).
Other interesting seabirds occurring in the ‘motus’ as well as on the main island are the Red-tailed Tropicbird and White-tailed Tropicbird, the Great Frigatebird, the Masked Booby, the Grey Ternlet, the scarce Sooty Tern, the Grey Noddy, and the Christmas Shearwater.
Seabirding in Easter Island © Claudio F. Vidal, Far South Expeditions
Over the years, we have been taking many visitors to these little volcanic islets, and we can conclude that this is truly a fantastic and unpassable experience for the seabirder. We normally circumnavigate the islets during the late afternoon, when the birds are coming back from the ocean to their breeding grounds, consisting of burrows, ledges and crevasses. At times the sea conditions prevent the departure of our sea trips (due to safety issues); but to live this experience is worthwhile to spend some extra couple of days in the island, just in case the sea keep unsettled.
The island still keeps many secrets, and not just for the archaeologist… These enigmatic and unknown seabirds can reveal more details to us about their feeding and breeding ecology, distribution range and population dynamics. On one of our early trips, our leader Enrique Couve did find the first documented record of Murphy’s Petrel, as he was watching ‘this dark-and-strange’ petrel flying over the ‘quarry of the hats’ - one of the archeological sites of the main island. Now, the breeding of this seabird on Rapa Nui has recently been proven.
Join us on one of our exciting journeys of discovery to this enigmatic island of Polynesia and discover its unknown and seldom-seen seabirds with us. Trip details of our trips to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) are here.
• A comprehensive article on the Birds of Easter Island by Alvaro Jaramillo. Click here.
• Our blog entry with the first notes on our sighting of Murphy’s Petrel (Pterodroma ultima) on Easter Island. Read here.
