Local ecologist Steve Sawyer, from Ecoworks, recently spoke with Muriwai local Major Pohatu who remembered harvesting tītī (sooty shearwaters) as a boy with his grandfather at Te Kurī-a-Pāoa.
His recollections of the birdlife on the headland were a far cry from the baron place researchers combed in 2004.
Searching at night with headlights, listening for calls, and using trained seabird detector dogs, it was confirmed that all seabirds except black shags had long become extinct.
Seabirds that once numbered in their millions on the headland had completely disappeared due to habitat loss, introduced stoats, ferrets, rats and feral cats.
During 2006, ecologists began to consider how the seabirds could be lured back. Most seabird recovery programmes are undertaken by transferring individual chicks from one site to another and feeding them by hand for several weeks — a time-consuming and costly venture, Mr Sawyer says.
But a world-first idea was hatched that year to try calling the birds back.
A solar-powered remote sound system was set up on the headland with speakers that played petrel and shearwater calls every night from sunset to sunrise on Te Kuri-Nicks Head point.
The system played the calls of six different species, aimed at enticing birds such as grey-faced and diving petrels, fluttering and sooty shearwaters. All were known to feed off the coast of Tairāwhiti and likely nested on the headland historically.
Ecologists didn’t hold out much hope of it being successful, but wanted to give it a try.
They thought it would likely take over 20 years, if it worked at all, but the method was successful almost immediately — as discovered during a night visit to the headland in May 2007.
Petrels are philopatric nesters, only breeding in the area where they had been raised as a chick. It was a huge ask to attract new birds to a completely unknown location to which their generation had no connection.
It was marvellous for the researchers to hear the guttural and growling “o-oooiii” call from a real bird responding to the recordings.
Gone for 77 years, petrels were finally back on the ground at Te Kuri a Paoa/Young Nicks Head. They were also using the artificial nesting burrows which the Ecoworks team had dug into the hill.
Mr Sawyer said it was a major step towards restoring the natural ecosystem processes that had been happening at this site for many millions of years prior to the arrival of humans and pests.
It had re-booted the process of bringing valuable marine nutrients back to mainland Tairāwhiti forests — marine nitrates and phosphates deposited by seabirds that benefited not only the trees but also bellbird, tui, kereru, tuatara and many other species.
It was also a significant step towards restoring an ancient taonga species that had played such a significant part for Ngāi Tāmanuhiri and other iwi in our region for centuries.
Initially only very small numbers of petrel had returned — two pairs of birds in year one, which produced only one chick. However, the numbers have steadily grown.
Petrels only lay one egg per year and would not return to the headland to breed until they were four to six years old and only, of course, if they survive their first few years at sea.
The population would take many years to build, but there was hope.
By 2023, more breeding pairs of the lost birds were visiting.
Petrel numbers continue to expand slowly, increasing by about 25 percent each year.
While initial population growth would be slow it would expand rapidly thanks to the previous installation of predator-proof fencing, Mr Sawyer said.
It was expected Te Kurī-a-Pāoa would eventually become home again for about 1.6 million nesting petrels.
It was exciting to think there were also other opportunities to restore this iconic taonga species at other sites within Tairāwhiti, Mr Sawyer said.
