According to news sources, no wild birds have lived on Rat Island since 1780 when their population was decimated by an unexpected horde of hungry rats that were spilled onto the island after a Japanese shipwreck. Only the largest birds survived their original onslaught as the non-native Norway Rat also known as the Brown Rat soon took over all the space on the small island.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropped poison onto the island from buckets hoisted from helicopters for more than a week and a half a few months ago. Currently, there are no signs of living rats and some species of birds such as Aleutian cackling geese, ptarmigan, peregrine falcons and black oyster-catchers, have returned to nest again on the 10-square mile island. Nearly two dozen people — some in helicopters — participated in the eradication project last September on the Aleutian island some 1,700 miles from Anchorage.Rats have been removed from some 300 islands around the world, including islands in New Zealand and atolls near Hawaii. This was the first attempt to remove rats from an Alaska island.