Nigel and the Real Gannet

The isolated ranger of Mana Island

0:00Hey, this is Radiolab, I'm Latif Nasser, and today we have a small story about a small life that touched people all over the world. Okay.

0:30One, two, three. And it doesn't end the way you want it to. Oh, there's a dollar. Get it up, get it up. Okay. Comes to us from producer Annie McKeown. 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 in, like, hiking boots. Like, ah, gosh, yes, tall. So tall, I've got quite bad posture and sort of loom around. Oh, so you're hunching around the island.

1:00Hunching and stalking, yes. Okay. Scowling. 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 sole inhabitant of an island off the west coast of New Zealand called Mana Island. Ah, gosh. It's like the perfect size of island. It's not too big and not too small. So, nose to 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 and woodland, and Chris lived there in an old

1:32farmhouse. Yeah, a wood stove and... Did you make your own food all the time? Well, there's 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. As 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 10 days without seeing or hearing anybody else. Often he'd be totally alone. Yeah.

1:56Okay. And what is... How did he... Why is he... Is he spurning civilization? What is he doing there? Um... Well, this 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, well, in all this time, the wildlife took a big hit. The 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.

2:29Eesh. 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. As, like, a safe haven for fragile species who need a bit of, like, tender, loving care and place to sort of find their feet again. So the island was home to things like... McGregor's skink and gold-striped gecko and the Cook-straight giant weta. The weta? Which is a giant lumbering grasshopper. Oh, my God.

2:59There are kiwi birds, little blue penguins called karoras. So cute. This endangered bird called the takahe. Which is, like, a giant blue chicken. I mean, it absolutely shouldn't exist and it almost didn't. And to protect all this fragility, the Department of Conservation installed a single human inhabitant. A ranger. And for a time, that ranger was Chris. 14th of November, 2016. That evening was calm and mild. His journal from the island is filled with... Two diving petrol burrows to check. Counting seabirds.

3:30Cutting grass for the better part of the day. Clearing meadows. Checking wax tags that monitor for invasive rodents. Keeping the island pest-free and just generally... Clearing weeds, sticking culverts, tending the nursery, building and dismantling. Doing what needed doing. On a fine day, 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 and concrete decoys

3:54The gannet colony. Do you know what a gannet is? A gannet? A seabird? Yeah, yes. But not just any seabird. Gannets are seabird royalty. They're snowy white with black wingtips and yellow heads. I mean, they're beautiful flyers. They're a big bird. They're very elegant. They glide along. And when hunting for fish... They tuck their wings in and their neck stretched out. They're billed down. They dive like fighter jets. Into the water in a big splash. I mean, one of the most spectacular sights you can see. And sounds you can hear. Like these birds are loud.

4:26Oh, it's incredibly noisy. It's, it's... Can you mimic that sound? Absolutely not. Not in a million years. Please? No. No. I couldn't. Like, no. Huh. They sound like this.

4:42And on a regular basis, Chris would busy himself with... Weeding the colony. And scrubbing the gannets. To remove the lichen blooms that have colonized them. Because they'd get covered in moss. Mm-hmm. You know, it's not such a convincing or alluring feature of a bird if they've got moss growing on their heads. Wait, what? They have moss on their heads? They do. Because these gannets are fake. The gannets are fake? A bunch of concrete gannets. Painted white with yellow heads, black wingtips. Placed around in kind of naturalistic positions.

5:13And this sound is a 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.

5:45So, 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. The months, the years ticked by. The fake gannets would fade. Volunteers would repaint them. Paint the rocks around them white to look like poop. Reposition the speakers. But still. For, I guess, nearly 20 years. This project was a failure.

6:16Totally unsuccessful.

6:20No gannets. No. No. I am.

Nigel arrives and chooses a statue

6:26But then. One day. A beautiful, snowy white, male gannet with golden head and black-tipped wings. Flew in. 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 Appleseed of gannets.

6:57Exactly. 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?

7:29Was she, like, was there something about her that was... No. No. Not to me. Not to me. Um, no. Huh. 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. My gosh. Um, yeah. That's a mystery for the ages.

7:55Gannets are sort of famous for their bonding rituals. Courtship 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 clacking them together. All part of just reaffirming the bond and being a partnership. And Nigel began to do a sort of one-sided version of this. With the decoy.

8:20He would do the whole big display thing of, you know, of putting up his wings and... 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 tufts of grass. And when he wasn't at sea, that's where he would be. By her side. Because the thing is, gannets are socially monogamous. Oh. And often mate for life. Aww. As time passed.

8:51Lonely Gannet finds love with concrete statues. The local paper in Wellington, you ran stories from time to time on him. He's a lovely bird, but he's a bit confused. More and more people began to hear about Nigel and his choice of mate and... It touched some sort of nerve with people. He's really taken with... 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. And the sort of the sadness and the tragic comedy of that situation.

9:23And Nigel had been living there alone for almost a year. 18th of August 2016. The morning was grey and rously without a breath of wind. By the time that Chris showed up. Nigel was in his usual spot. To find that he shared the island with this strange... I... Neighbour. I'm sort of tempted to spin a tale of seeing him as competition and as just dividing the island between us. And, you know, this island's only big enough for one misanthropic loner, Nigel. You stick to your side of the island and I'll have mine.

9:53It's funny because, like, I'm trying hard not to anthropomorphise him. But if I just indulge for a second and imagine from Nigel's perspective, watching this bizarre, like, tall man slouching around the island, just alone. And he's like, I'm so worried about that Chris guy. He just seems so lonely. Yeah. He doesn't seem to miss human company. He needs a statue. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's right. But what Chris was really thinking about when it came to Nigel was, what can I do? As wonderful as it is to have one gannet, you don't want just one gannet.

10:25You want a bunch. And one bird, no matter how hard it tries, cannot make more birds with a statue. So, yeah, that is 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.

More birds arrive but keep their distance

10:52Until...

More birds arrive but keep their distance

10:5325th of December. A Christmas miracle. Just before Christmas. It would just be before Christmas, yeah. Tell me. Oh, it was absolutely amazing. Okay, I'm going to imagine you, you're walking, you're doing your daily walk. You walk towards the gannet colony. And you hear sounds. Is this any... You have no idea. You don't remember. I remember being greatly elated. The great surprise came yesterday on my visit to the gannet colony, when I saw no less than four actual gannets in place.

11:23Oh my God. Three more real-life gannets had finally come. On Christmas? Yes! This is unprecedented, and coming only ten days after our repositioning the speaker system, it fills me with pride. This group were just doing exactly what Nigel had done several years before. They'd been lured in, they'd landed, they were interested, displaying to each other, they were checking out the replicas. And... 5th of January 2018. Again, I saw four gannets at 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.

12:00Yeah. Yeah.

12:05At least that's how everyone thought this was gonna go. What actually happened... After the break. After the break, you mother flippers! You can say that, too. Oh, I love that. What actually happened... After the break, you mother flippers. That's good. That's really good. I like it.

12:28Latif, Radiolab, back from break with Annie and Chris and Nigel. Yeah, so Nigel the gannet lived alone with his concrete decoy lover for a couple years, and then, finally, three more live gannets come. And now Nigel can be with his own kind. And now he can have real friends. Now he can have real friends. Maybe a real mate. Yeah. Except...

12:55No. No.

12:59Love concretes all one lovebird's tale. 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 gannets 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 gannets... They really, really didn't go anywhere near Nigel. And he had no interest whatsoever in them.

13:31This group of gannets and Nigel completely ignored one another. Huh. Now the newspaper's headline read... Gannet with a heart of stone. He's got live company, but he prefers a concrete decoy.

13:48People were sort of amused, a little disappointed maybe, but... You know, bird courtship is intricate. Chris knew that these were early days. Just because, you know, these other birds turned up, it's not going to be immediate chemistry. You know, to find a lifelong mate is a deliberate strategy to be cautious and to make sure it's the right one. These things take time. Yeah. There's always hope.

14:14But now... This just feels like the wrong ending to the story. Because those birds... Unfortunately, yeah, they didn't stay. ...ultimately flew away and didn't come back. No. And during Chris's tenure on the island, no other gannets would come. It could just be where we as humans have chosen to put this potential gannet colony doesn't suit gannets. Maybe the fishing grounds are too far. Maybe the aspect is wrong. It could just be a bunch of things. The idea of decoy, like these decoy colonies,

14:46is this a thing that they do with other birds and it's successful in other parts of the world? Yeah, 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 has had a lonely first bird, has had a Nigel, and they've made that leap. But in this case, actually...

Nigel's death and global attention

15:1331st of January 2018. Only a few weeks after those new gannets arrived. Bright, sunny, hot day. This is reputed to be the hottest month in New Zealand's 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 sound speakers. So there's a slight crest of a hill before you look then down on the sweep of the small promontory where the Gannet colony is. And I could see right away something wasn't right.

15:44Nigel was there in his nest. There, but his position wasn't right. And I walked down and Nigel was just prone with his wings spread out and his head to one side. Up in the Gannet colony, I found Nigel dead on his nest.

16:01He had no visible injury.

16:09Nigel, the lonely Gannet found dead beside his concrete love. 3rd of February 2018. Nigel's death was published in the Dominion Post. The wild, lonely as seabird. For several days, the phone has not stopped for interviews. The futility of his life and bleak melancholy of his end have attracted worldwide attention. 6th of February 2018. Nigel spent his whole life loving, never getting anything in return. The world's media seem to like the story of a lovesick bird dying of heartbreak at the stony indifference of his concrete mate.

16:39Oh man, this story is just such a bummer. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one way to look at it. Nigel, the lonely Gannet, may never have found real love. And that's the way that most people looked 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, that's us pacing ourselves into Nigel's story.

17:12Which, if you're a conservationist like Chris, it's not really 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 they are as individual as we are. They all have individual characteristics and personalities. No two are the same. And we're no different. Did you ever think... Is there something wrong with Nigel? Well, I think he must have been an unusual bird in a way.

17:43In 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 a new home. Very new. Yeah. Yeah. Just like in human populations, most of us want a stakless home. I think he was part of that group with a bit more wanderlust. Gannet populations rely on birds like Nigel.

18:13Birds that are a little bit different. Birds that are willing to try something new. Otherwise, there never would be any new colonies. And the species would be stuck on those same overcrowded cliffs forever.

18:26And 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. They've all been making plans for Nigel

19:05And by they I mean the ornithologists They live in houses made of bricks and glass Nigel lives alone at the edge of a cliff But Burt Banders fill binders and books with his biography They notice habits and record his swaps on TikTok phones

19:38Meanwhile, Nigel wonders Why don't they ever ask me I could tell them there's a difference Between being lonely and being alone Did you ever feel lonely?

20:04Not really I don't really feel I don't That's not something I feel too much Alone on man I sank into a malaise Brought on perhaps by days of grim grey rain Winter darkness barely cheered By the struggling fire kindled from damp wood I mean, I do occasionally Maybe a little bit Nigel's commitment to bachelorhood Called to the concrete colony By a cassette

20:35Nigel noticed the other birds Didn't fly or flap around He remembered an old French peacock I told him Hell is other birds Thought well This is just the kind of place I'd like to settle down Is there still sounds being broadcast out?

21:12Yes, yes And is his mate The one that he chose Still there? Yes Yes, definitely Really? For sure I don't know For me I just can't stop thinking about That decoy bird Nigel's partner Her faded eyes Right this moment Staring out to sea He was a dumb scientist Himself he was no bird brain And his heart was huge

21:44So 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 they just sat there And stared out to sea When he died Carl cocked Nigel's tiny tombstones

22:17At the top Here lies Nigel Look at it 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 And even how you can see them live At theburninghell.com This episode was reported and produced By Annie McEwen Edited by Alex Neeson Facts checked by Diane Kelly

22:48With voice acting by Maya Appleby Melamed And David Gable Special thanks to Melody Thomas and Kirsten Johnstone From the New Zealand Narrative Podcast Company Popsock Media Thanks also to Matthias Korn And Ariel Sherratt From The Burning Hell And Stephen Lampke At You've Changed Records For updates on the Epic Conservation Project That is Manna Island Visit Friends of Manna Island At mannaisland.org.nz I especially recommend that If you are a

23:18Gannet real estate agent There's really a lot of Vacancy there Primo properties That are just waiting To be Gannetized 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 a 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

23:48If you haven't gotten Enough animal stories For today I wanted to let you know That the Terrestrials team Just dropped a Scrappy little episode About the scrappy Little raccoon Gimothy 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 has closely Studied Gimothy A disability advocate Who tries to make sense Of our love For Gimothy And if that's not enough The episode is also infused

24:18With lots of 90s Seattle grunge nostalgia Because of course it is Given the Terrestrials Soundscape Yeah anyway Just check it out You might get a kick out of it Search for the Gimothy Over on the Terrestrials podcast Yeah that's it for us Thank you thank you And catch you right back here Next week Hi I'm Jonquil And I'm from Brooklyn And here are the staff credits Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller And Latif Nasa Soren Wheeler

24:48Is our executive editor Sarah Sandback Is our executive director Our managing editor Is Pat Walters Dylan Keefe Is our director of sound design Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom W. Harry Fortuna David Gable Maria Paz Gutierrez Sindhu Nyanam Sambandan Matt Keelty Mona Madgauka Annie McEwan Alex Neeson Sarah Kari Natalia Ramirez Joanna Strogatz Anisa Vitsa Ariane Wack Molly Webster

25:19And Jessica Young With help from Gabi Santos And Maya Appleby-Malamet Our fact checkers Are Nora Belblidia Hilary Elkins Rachel Gross Diane Kelly Emily Krieger Natalie Middleton And Sophie Samai Hi, I'm Aubrey Calling from Salt Lake City, Utah Leadership support For Radiolab's Science programming Is provided by The Simons Foundation And the John Templeton Foundation Foundational support For Radiolab Was provided by

25:50The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Arts A M думаю Be sure to Para To be the A M