Boatswain Bird Island

Boatswain Bird Island is an island some 270 meters off the east coast of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean with an area of approximately 5.3 hectares (13 acres). It is administered from Georgetown on Ascension, which, together with Tristan da Cunha, is a dependency of Saint Helena. Saint Helena is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.

There are thousands of inhabitants on this tiny island, all of which are birds, which give the island its white colour. Amongst the many species of birds living there are Sooty tern (or Wideawake birds due to a distinctive cry that sounds like they are saying 'wideawake'), boobies, petrels, noddies, Ascension Frigatebirds and Boatswain birds.

The island is the home of the majority of Ascension's birds due to rats (accidentally introduced by passing ships) and then cats (introduced to catch the rats, as well as pets) eating the birds and their eggs on the main island. Since the mid 1990s there has been a feral cat eradication program, alongside a rat eradication program, to encourage the birds back onto the Ascension mainland. The importance of this program is to maintain the numbers of some of the birds unique to Ascension, such as the Ascension Frigatebirds and the Boatswain birds.

Boatswain Bird Island should not be confused with nearby, still much smaller Boatswain Bird Rock, only about 10 by 5 meters in size, located 570 meters southeast of the island and 360 meters northeast of the closest coast of Ascension Island.

The south shore of the island has an impressive natural arch.

External links

* [http://www.britlink.org/boatswain.htm Boatswain Bird Island at Britlink]