Nigel and the Real Gannet

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You're listening to Radio Lab.

Radio... From... WNYS. See? Yep.

Hey, this is Radio Lab. I'm left with Nasser.

“And today, we have a small story about a small life”

that touched people all over the world. Okay. One. See? And it doesn't end the way you want it to.

Oh, there's a dog. Get it out. Get it out. Okay. Come to us from producer Annie McHuen.

Hi, Annie. And it starts with a total loner. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Let's picture you.

I imagine that you're tall and you stride around the island.

Like hiking boats. Like, gosh. Yes, tall. And so tall I've got quite bad posture and sort of lumen around. I'll see you're hunching around the island.

Hunching and stalking, yes. Okay. Gouling. But under a sun hat, because the sun's pretty strong in New Zealand. This is Chris Bell.

And back about a decade ago, he was the soul inhabitant of an island off the west coast of New Zealand called Manna Island. Ah, gosh. It's like the perfect size of island. It's not too big and not too small.

No, still tail. It takes about an hour and a half to walk across. Yeah, looking down. Yeah, of course. It's got cliffs, a high grassy plateau, shrubs in woodland.

And Chris lived there in an old farmhouse. Yeah, woodstoof. And did you make your own food all the time? Well, there was no one else to make it for me. So yeah.

Although he did share the house with handfuls of geckos. A whole bunch of geckos. The soon as evening came, you would hear them rattling about in the roof space. And sometimes he'd get human visitors. But very common to go ten days without seeing or hearing anybody else.

Often he'd be totally alone. Yeah. Okay.

“And what is, how, why is he, why is he, is he spurning civilization?”

What is he doing there? Well, the island was sort of in a state of recovery. Gosh, it was farmed for many years. For a hundred plus years, it had been used as farmland. I think it was sheep and cattle.

And although in all this time, the wildlife took a big hit. A sheep and the cows ate all the grass and trees. An invasive species arrived, particularly mice. And the mice ate the eggs of the birds and lizards that lived on the island and reduced

this ecosystem to basically a wasteland.

But then, in the 1980s, the Department of Conservation of New Zealand stepped in and got rid of all the mice and all the sheep. And once the mice were gone, and planting restoration began. They thought, let's use this island. I was like a safe haven for fragile species who need a bit of like tender, loving care

and places to find their feet again. So the island was home to things like... I'm a Greggis king and called Stradgeko and the Cooke Street giant wetter. The wetter? Which is a giant lumbering grasshopper.

Oh my god. There are kiwi birds, little blue penguins called Corora's. So cute. This endangered bird called the Takahay. Which is like a giant blue chicken.

I mean, absolutely shouldn't exist and almost didn't. And to protect all this fragility, the Department of Conservation installed a single, human inhabitant. A ranger. In for a time, that ranger was criss.

“14th of November 2016, that evening was calm and mild.”

His journal from the island is filled with... Two diving petrol boroughs to check. Counting seabirds. But in grass for the better part of the day. Clearing meadows.

Checking wax tags that monitor for invasive rodents. Keeping the island passed free and just generally... Clearing weeds, sticking coathets, tending the nursery, building and dismantling. Doing what needed doing. I'd have found a...

I took a backpack sprayer up to the gannet colony. His work took him all over the island, sometimes as far as one of the more unusual conservation projects. It's a little off the main track. The gannet colony. Do you know what a gannet is?

A gannet. A seabird? Yeah, yes, but not just any seabird. Gannets are seabird royalty. There's snowy white with black wing tips and yellow heads.

I mean, that beautiful fly is their big bird, the fairy elegance. They glide along. And when hunting for fish. They took their wings in and they're next stretched out, they're built down. They dive like fighter jets.

It's the water in a big splash. I mean, one of the most spectacular sides you can see. And sounds you can hear, like these birds are allowed. Oh, it's incredibly noisy. It's...

Any mimic that sound? Absolutely not. Not in a million years. Please? No.

No. I couldn't. Like, no. Huh. They sound like this.

And on a regular basis, Chris would busy himself with. Weeding the colony. And scrubbing the gannets. Two of the light and blooms that have colonized them. Because they get covered in moss.

You know, it's not such a convincing or a luring feature of a bird. If they've got moss growing on their heads. Wait, what? They have moss on their heads?

Because these gannets are fake.

The gannets are fake. A bunch of concrete to gannets. Painted whites with yellow heads, black wing tips. Placed around in kind of naturalistic positions. And the sound is recording playing over speakers.

“And like, why did they make a bunch of fake gannets?”

Well, the Department of Conservation put them there. Like, in the mid-90s, like years and years before Chris showed up. To try to lure gannets to the island. With the hopes of establishing a new gannet colony. Where gannets can increase their numbers and grow.

And have another safe haven in a very unpredictable and changing world. The only problem is gannets prefer to nest where other gannets are already nesting. So, how do you get gannets to come to a place that has no gannets? Well, one way is to make some. And then you wait.

And wait. And wait. And wait.

A month, the years ticked by the fake gannets would fade.

Volunteers would repaint them. Paint the rocks around them white till if I poop. Reposition the speakers. But still. For, and like a nearly 20 years.

This project was a failure. Totally unsuccessful. No gannets. No, no. I am.

But then. One day.

“A beautiful snowy white male gannet with golden head and black tipped wings.”

Fluent hovered over the decoys. And he landed. Checked the place out. Decided that the colony was a good place. And then he moved in.

This was huge. Absolutely huge. Because he's a lot more convincing than the concrete replicas. This bird was momentum. This is the pioneer.

This is the Johnny Apple seed of gannet. Exactly. He was now going to be the lure for other gannets to come. And he was given the name. Nigel.

Nigel no mates. Oh. Because soon it became apparent that this bird... Oh gosh. Was maybe a little different.

I mean, it somehow... It seemed as though Nigel was taking a shine to one particular decoy.

“Was she in any way different than the others?”

Was she... Was there something about her that was... No. No, not to me. Not to me.

Yeah. No. She was one of the sitting gannets. Wings tucked by her sides. Head raised.

Painted eyes gazing out over the ocean. I'm just wondering why he chose her. Yeah. Why gosh. Yeah.

That's a mystery for the ages. Gannets are sort of famous for their bonding rituals. Court ship is really important. They'll do these almost dances. Calling to one another, stretching their necks out high, opening their wings.

Raising their beaks up slowly towards the sky before quickly clapping them together. Hold part of just reaffirming the bond and being a partnership. And Nigel began to do sort of one-sided version of this with the decoy. He would do the whole big display thing of putting up his wings. Gently resting his head on top of her head.

And doing a nice big call. He even built her a nest. Just a low platform of sticks and muds and a tufts of grass. And when he wasn't at sea, that's where he would be. By her side.

Because the thing is, again, it's our socially monogamous, an often mate for life. As time passed. The local paper in Wellington is your landstories from time to time on him. He's a lovely bird, but he's a bit confused. More and more people begin to hear about Nigel and his choice of mate.

And it touched some sort of nerve with people. He's really taken. This idea of a lonely bird. He's obviously quite desperate. Finding a mate who doesn't really exist.

Tempting to impress what he appears to believe is a real female bird. In the sort of the sadness and the tragic comedy of that situation. And Nigel had been living there alone for almost a year. It took August 2016. The morning was great, recently, without a breath of wind.

By the time that Chris showed up. Nigel was in his usual spot. To find that he's shared the island with this strange. I, I, neighbor. Sort of tempted to spin a tale of seeing him as a competition.

And as just dividing the island between us. You know, to, you did this island. So he's been here for one mission floppy. Yeah. Hello, and a 19.

You stick to your side to the island along with mine. Yeah. It's funny because like I'm trying hard not to answer for more advice him.

But if I just indulge for a second.

And imagine from, from Nigel's perspective, watching this bizarre.

It's just a loan.

“And he's like, I'm so worried about that Chris guy.”

He just seems so lonely. Yeah, he doesn't seem to be a good mission. He's really comfortable not to. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

But what Chris was really thinking about when it came to Nigel was. What can I do? This wonderful is it is to have form gannet. You, you don't want just one gannet. You want, you want a bunch.

And one bird, no matter how hard it tries, cannot make more birds with statue. So yeah, that, that is the, the difficulty. And so he would occasionally head over to the colony. Clean the decoys.

Make sure the speakers were working. Watch Nigel. Watch the empty skies above him. And that's how things were. Until.

25th of December. A Christmas miracle. Just before Christmas. It would just be before Christmas. Tell me.

Oh, it's absolutely amazing.

“Okay, I'm going to imagine you're walking.”

You're doing your daily walk. You walk towards the gannet colony. When you hear sounds. Is this any, you have no idea. You don't remember.

I remember being greatly related. The great surprise came yesterday on my visit to the Gannet colony. When I saw no less than four actual gannets in place. Oh, my God. Three more real life gannets had finally come.

On Christmas. Yes. This is unprecedented and coming only 10 days after our re-positioning the speaker system that fills me with pride. This group worked just doing exactly what Nigel had done several years before.

They'd been to a den. They'd landed. They were interested to spring. To each other. They were checking out the replicas.

And the January 2018. Again, I saw four gannets of the colony. They seemed to sort of settle in. Gosh. Finally Nigel, the live bird,

was a powerful enough lure to bring in these other live birds. Like he did his job. Yeah.

“At least that's how everyone thought this was going to go.”

What actually happened after the break. After the break, you mother flippers. Is it that? Oh, I love that. What actually happened after the break, you mother flippers.

That's good. That's really good.

The headlines never stop and it's harder than ever to tell what's real

what matters and what's just noise. That's where positive America comes in. I'm Tommy Vitor. And every week I'm joined by fellow former Obama-Aids John Favreau, John Levit and Dan Fyfer to break down the big stories.

I'm packed what they mean for the future of our democracy. And I'd just in a humor to stay sane along the way. You'll also hear honest in-depth conversations with big voices in politics, media, and culture, like Rachel Maddo, Gavin Newsom, and Mark Cuban that you won't find anywhere else. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday.

With deep dives every other weekend. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Watch on YouTube. Or subscribe on Apple Podcasts for ad-free episodes. Lettiff, radio lab, back from break with Annie, and Chris, and Nineter.

Yeah. So Nigel's again, it lived alone with his concrete decoy lover for a couple years. And then finally, three more live-genits come. And now Nigel can be with his own kind. Now you can have real friends.

Now you can have real friends. Maybe you don't make it. Yeah. Except. No.

No. No. Love concrete's all one love bird's tail. The local paper published a picture of the colony at this time. And you can see in the foreground there are the three new live-genits mingling among the decoys.

And in the background, way, way on the other side of the colony. There's Nigel. And this was, apparently, the common arrangement, because these new granites. They really, really didn't go anywhere near Nigel. And he had no interest whatsoever in them.

This, this proof of granites and Nigel completely ignored one another. Ha. Now the newspapers headline red. Granite with a heart of stone. He's got live company, but he prefers a concrete decoy.

People were sort of abused. A little disappointed maybe. But, you know, bird courtship is intricate. Chris knew that these were early days. Just because, you know, these are the birds turned up.

It's not going to be immediate chemistry. You know, to find a lifelong mate is the deliberate strategy to be cautious and to make sure it's the right one. These things take time. Yeah.

There's always hope. But now. This just feels like the wrong ending to this story. Because those birds. Unfortunately, they didn't stay.

Ultimately flew away and didn't come back.

No.

It could just be where we as humans have chosen to put this potential granite colony doesn't suit granites. Maybe the fish and grounds are too far, maybe the aspect is wrong. Could just be a bunch of things. The idea of decoy.

Like these decoy colonies.

“Is this a thing that they do with other birds and it's successful in other parts of the world?”

Yeah. It's a tried and tested means. And it's led to some amazing, amazing conservation successes. Bringing birds back to places they should be. And, you know, each of those projects that has succeeded.

It's had a lonely first bird. It's had an ideal. And they've made that leap. But in this case, actually. There's a first of January 2018.

Only a few weeks after those new granites arrived. Bright sunny hot day. This is repeated to be the hottest amongst any students history. It was a scorcher. And the days were baking.

And I can't remember the reason I went up to the colony. Probably just to do some work on the sounds because. So there's a slight crest of a hill before you look them down on the sweep of the small property where the granite colony is. And I could see right away. Something wasn't right.

Nigel was there in his nest. There, but his position wasn't right. And I walked down and Nigel was just pruned with his wings spread out. And he said to one side. But the granite colony.

I found Nigel dead on his nest. He had no visible injury. Nigel, the lonely granite found dead beside his concrete love. Third of every 2018 Nigel's death was published in the Dominion post. The world's only a seabed.

The several days, the phone is not stopped for interviews. The futility of his life and bleak melancholy of his end. Have attracted worldwide attention. Sixth of every 2018 Nigel was spent his whole life loving.

Never getting anything in return.

The world's media seems to like the story of a live sick bird dying of heartbreak and the stony and difference of his concrete mate. The story is such a bummer.

“Yeah. I mean, I think that's one way to look at it.”

Nigel, the lonely granite, may never have found real love. And that's the way the most people look at it. But are we not all Nigel? A lot of people saw themselves in Nigel. Nigel stands for all of us who are incapable of facing reality.

Their own heartbreak, their own isolation. He died as he lived, confused and alone. But of course, as us, piecing ourselves into Nigel's story,

which if your conservation is like Chris, it's not always something you do.

But on the other hand. I definitely felt a kinship in the way that I think when you work with wild animals, you realise that there is individual as we are. They all have individual characteristics and personalities, no two are the same. And when were different?

“Did you ever think is there something wrong with Nigel?”

Well, I think he must have been an unusual bird in a way in that he was one of those. I imagine he would have been one of those birds who had some more of the instinct to go and try something new to find... Very new. Yeah, just like in human populations, most of us know, what's stickless to them.

I think he was part of that group with a bit more wonderless. Get it populations rely on birds like Nigel, birds that are a little bit different, birds that are willing to try something new.

Otherwise, there never would be any new colonies, and species would be stuck on those same overcrowded cliffs forever.

And we can't know, of course we can't know, we'll never know. But maybe a bird who's not afraid to leave his community, to strike out on his own. Maybe that kind of bird is not going to want the thing that we think it should want. Yeah, like we clearly know what Chris was thinking and wanted to happen here, but like we really don't know what Nigel wanted. Follow the Jists.

They live in houses made of bricks and glass. Nigel lives alone at the edge of a cliff.

Notice how that's an recorded swamps on tip-to-fones.

“Meanwhile, Nigel wonders why they ever ask me I could tell less difference between me and lonely and being alone.”

Did you ever feel lonely? I'm not really... I don't really feel... I don't... that's not something I feel too much. Alone on my nigh sank into a village, wrote on perhaps by days of grim grey rain. Went to darkness barely cheered by the struggling fire kintled from Dumpwood.

I mean, I do occasionally, maybe a little bit. Nobody, by a cassette. Nigel noticed the other birds.

Didn't fly or fly around.

You remember no fresh me car kept holding. Hell is over birds thought well. This is just the kind of place I'd like to settle down. Is there still sounds being broadcast out? Yes, yes.

“And is his mate the one that he chose? Still there?”

Yes, yes, definitely. Really? For sure.

For me, I just can't stop thinking about that decoy bird, Nigel's partner.

Her faded eyes. Right this moment. Steering out to sea. himself he was no bird brain and his heart was huge. So he chose a concrete mate and he built her a nest. He figured it was what they wanted him to do.

Nigel did most of the talking, but he was used to that. Usually it just sat there instead out to sea.

“When he died, calm, calm, Nigel's time. He tuned stones at the top.”

Here lies Nigel's again. Alone but never lonely. Thank you, Annie, and thank you as well to the Burning Hell. The band that let us play their song about Nigel Nigel. The Gannet is the name of the song.

Check them out. You can find more about them. Even how you can see them live at the BurningHell.com. This episode was reported and produced by Annie McEwen, edited by Alex Neeson. In fact, check by Diane Kelly with voice acting by Maya Appell B. And David Gable. Special thanks to Melody Thomas and Kirsten Johnson from the New Zealand Narrative podcast company PopSock Media.

Thanks also to Mattias Corn and Ariel Sharot from the Burning Hell. And Steven Lamkey at "You've changed records." For updates on the epic conservation project that is Man Island. Visit friends of Man Island at Man Island.org.nz. I especially recommend that if you are a Gannet real estate agent.

There's really a lot of vacancy there. Primo properties that are just waiting to be sanitized. It's funny. You just heard a song. But actually many, many people wrote songs and poems about Nigel, including one piece of music that debuted at the Sydney Opera House.

No kidding. Find the link to this as well as to some other works of art inspired by Nigel on our website. RadioLab.org. And just before we go, if you haven't gotten enough animal stories for today, I want to let you know that the terrestrial's team just dropped a scrappy little episode

about the scrappy little raccoon Gemithy, who if you don't already know from your social media feed, is the Seattle raccoon that has been going viral this summer. The episode includes an ecologist who is closely studied Gemithy, a disability advocate who tries to make sense of our love for Gemithy.

And if that's not enough, the episode is also infused with lots of 90s Seattle. Grunge nostalgia because of course it is given terrestrials, soundscape. Anyway, just check it out. You might get a kick out of it.

Yeah, that's it for us. Thank you.

“Thank you and catch you right back here next week.”

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