[va-richmond-general] So sad :(

  
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1540&ncid=1540&e=5&u=/afp/20050725/sc_afp/britainscienceatlantic_050725153217
   
  Giant mice on south Atlantic island 'eating seabird chicks alive' 
  Mon Jul 25,11:32 AM ET 

  LONDON (AFP) - Giant carnivorous mice on the British-ruled island of Gough in 
the south Atlantic are eating seabird chicks alive in mass feeding frenzies, 
threatening several species' survival, a wildlife charity warned. 

  The house mice, while three times the size of those seen in mainland Britain, 
are still only one 250th the size of the chicks they attack, the Royal Society 
for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said Monday.
  The mice, which strike at night in large numbers, are devouring more than one 
million petrel, shearwater and albatross chicks on Gough Island every year, the 
charity warned.

  The island, a UN World Heritage site in the South Atlantic, is the most 
important seabird colony on the planet, hosting more than 10 million birds. It 
is one of the Tristan da Cunha group of islands, a British overseas territory.

  "Gough Island hosts an astonishing community of seabirds, and the catastrophe 
could make many extinct within decades," said Geoff Hilton, a senior research 
biologist at the RSPB.

  "We think there are about 700,000 mice which have somehow learned to eat 
chicks live, much like blue tits learned to peck milk bottle tops," he said.

  "The albatross chicks weigh up to ten kilograms (22 pounds), and ironically 
albatrosses evolved to nest on Gough because it had no mammal predators -- that 
is why they are so vulnerable," he said.

  "The mice weigh just 35 grams (1.235 ounces). It is like a tabby cat 
attacking a hippopotamus."

  In a pattern only ever seen on Gough Island, one mouse attacks a chick and 
the resultant blood appears to attract others, who gnaw into the defenceless 
chick's body, creating a gaping wound until it dies.

  The chicks are more or less immobile and unable to defend themselves, Hilton 
said.

  "Without predators this would not be a problem, but for a carnivorous mouse 
population one of the wettest and windiest places on earth it is an easy meal 
of almost unimaginable quality," he said.

  "The result is carnage."

  Scientists suspect that the mice are also eating the eggs and chicks of the 
rare ground-nesting Gough bunting, a small finch found nowhere else in the 
world.

  Researchers think the finch has been forced from the best nesting sites into 
less suitable uplands areas.

  The Gough mouse is one of 2,900 non-native species damaging native wildlife 
in the 17 UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, a review by the Joint 
Nature Conservation Committee has found.

  Gough Island hosts 99 percent of the world's Tristan albatross and Atlantic 
petrel populations, the birds most often attacked. Just 2,000 Tristan albatross 
pairs remain.

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