Taiaroa Head, at the end of the Otago Peninsula near Dunedin in New Zealand’s South Island, is one of the very few places in the World where the general public can view breeding albatrosses without the need of joining a sea-going expedition.  Globally Endangered Northern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea sanfordi have bred at Taiaroa Head, now a nature reserve, since 1938 and it is has become a major tourist attraction.

Northern Royal Albatross and chick at Taiaroa Head, photograph by Lyndon Perriman

In December last year ACAP Latest News reported that 32 eggs had been laid in the 2014/15 season (click here).  The Royal Albatross Centre now informs that 27 chicks are heading towards fledging and “are doing very well, receiving regular feedings from their parents”.

If all 27 chicks fledge then a breeding success of 84% will have been attained for the latest breeding season.

Click here to view a 30-minute film shot in the 1980s on Taiaroa Head’s albatrosses.

The Royal Albatross Centre is operated by the Otago Peninsula Trust and the Department of Conservation.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 March 2015

Martina Müller (Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Japan) and colleagues have published in the journal Animal Behaviour on whether Scopoli’s Shearwater partners stay together at sea.  “We found that partners migrate to similar wintering areas along the coast of Africa.  But they don't seem to be coordinating their movements because they didn't travel together.  So why then do partners migrate to the same places?  We found evidence pointing to inbreeding: individuals breeding closer to each other in the colony tend to be more closely related and also to migrate to similar destinations.”

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Long-term pair bonds occur in diverse animal taxa, but they are most common in birds, and can last from a few years to a lifetime.  In many of these species, after the reproductive season, birds migrate to distant nonbreeding grounds where they remain for several months, and until recently, little was known about whether partners maintain contact during migration.   This gap in knowledge was primarily due to past methodological difficulties in tracking long-term, large-scale movements of individuals. However, the development of new animal-borne geolocation devices has enabled researchers to track movements of individuals for a year or more.  We tracked the annual migrations of both members of breeding pairs of Scopoli's shearwaters,Calonectris diomedea, breeding on Linosa Island (Italy) and found that although they did not migrate together, they did spend a similar number of days travelling to and from similar terminal nonbreeding areas.  Although migration destinations were alike, they were not identical.  That partners did not appear to travel or spend time together in the nonbreeding season suggests that similarities were not due to behavioural coordination.  We performed additional analyses to uncover alternative, potential proximate mechanisms.  First, we found that body mass of breeding adults during the chick-rearing period correlated positively with the decision to migrate further south, so conceivably pair members may migrate to similar areas because of shared reproductive costs; however, partners were not of similar body mass.  Distances between nonbreeding areas for individuals that nested closer together were smaller than for individuals that nested far apart.  As neighbours tend to be more closely related due to high natal philopatry, this suggests that similarities within pairs in migration behaviour may reflect the influence of shared genes on migration strategy.”

A Scopoli's Shearwater gets ready to fledge, photograph by Jacob Gonzalez-Solis

Reference:

Müller, M.S., Massa, B., Phillips, R.A. & Dell'Omo, G. 2015.  Seabirds mated for life migrate separately to the same places: behavioural coordination or shared proximate causes?  Animal Behaviour 102: 267-276.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 February 2015

Graham Parker (Parker Conservation, New Zealand) has reported to ACAP Latest News on contractual field work he has been involved with over the last year on ACAP-listed albatrosses and petrels at New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands.

Over July and August last year a winter survey of Grey Petrels Procellaria cinerea was undertaken on Campbell Island on behalf of the Department of Conservation and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).  The key objectives were defining the spatial extent of breeding colonies, estimating colony densities and obtaining an estimate of burrow occupancy.

Graham Parker searches for Grey Petrel burrows on Campbell Island

This was followed by a summer visit back to Campbell and to the Auckland Islands, along with Kalinka Rexer-Huber (PhD student, Department of Zoology, University of Otago) and albatross researcher Paul Sagar, recently retired from NIWA.  On Campbell activities included trialling a boat-based survey of Light-mantled Albatrosses  Phoebetria palpebrata along the island’s coastal cliffs, deploying and retrieving GLS loggers on Southern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea epomophora and attempting to retrieve loggers from Campbell  Thalassarche impavida and Grey-headed T. chrysostoma Albatrosses.

In the Auckland group, a visit to Disappointment Island allowed a mark-recapture study of White-capped Albatrosses T. steadi to be established.  A visit was also paid to Adams Island.

White-capped Albatross on Disappointment Island, photograph by Graham Parker

At all localities visited Kalinka continued to collect information, including on population sizes, on White-chinned Petrels Procellaria aequinoctialis towards her higher degree.  Her thesis research entails addressing tracking, provenance and census gaps for White-chinned Petrels.  "I aim to produce a population estimate for the Auckland Islands, to track individuals at sea and to assess the taxonomic status of New Zealand populations. More broadly, I will evaluate population genetic structure to determine the origin of petrels caught as fisheries bycatch."

White-chinned Petrel on Disappointment Island, photograph by Graham Parker

Graham is clearly keeping busy.  He is now helping with the third year of translocating Vulnerable Pycroft's Petrel Pterodroma pycrofti chicks from Red Mercury Island to 80-ha Motuora Island in the Hauraki Gulf by the Motuora Restoration Society.  Motuora is free of introduced mammals (click here) and thus a suitable site for the establishment of new seabird colonies by translocation, such as an earlier transfer of Common Diving Petrels Pelecanoides urinatrix to the island (click here).

Pycroft's Petrel, photograph by the Motuora Restoration Society

The White-chinned Petrel survey undertaken on Disappointment Island was supported by an award to NIWA from the ACAP Grants Programme in its 2014 round (click here).

With thanks to Graham Parker and Kalinka Rexer-Huber for information and photographs.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 March 2015, updated 13 March 2015

The British Ornithologists' Union 2015 Annual Conference with the theme “Birds in time and space: avian tracking and remote sensing” will be held over 31 March to 2 April at the University of Leicester in the UK.

“This conference will highlight the role of telemetry in understanding the ecology and behaviour of free-living wild birds.  Continuing advances in instrumentation and miniaturization are rapidly making remote-sensing of movements, activity and physiology available and cost-effective for all but the smallest species. This conference will showcase and consolidate the most recent research arising from these advances, emphasizing the value of telemetry for both testing theory and aiding conservation and management.  The advantages of integrated and multifaceted approaches will be a key feature of the conference, as will new developments and opportunities in this rapidly-advancing field.”

Rory Wilson (Department of Biosciences, Swansea University) will give the plenary address on “Smart technology on smarter birds: animal-attached systems for difficult questions”.

Among the oral presentations to be made six will report on tracking studies conducted on procellariiform seabirds, including on several species of ACAP-listed albatrosses (click here for the abstracts).  In addition as well as conventional posters, “talking posters” - short, automated, narrated and unmanned PowerPoint presentations - will run on a continuous loop during breaks in a dedicated screening room.

Grey-headed Albatross, photograph by Richard Phillips 

Thee six oral papers follow along with their presenting authors.

Thomas Clay:  Using habitat-preference models to predict the global non-breeding distributions of albatrosses (Grey-headed Albatross Thalassarche chrysostoma)

José Manuel de Los Reyes González:  Annual consistency of foraging grounds depends on spatial scale and population/individual level: the case of Cory’s Shearwater in the Canary Current upwelling (Calonectris sp.)

Maria Dias:  Using seabird tracking data to identify marine protected areas: does inter-annual variation justify multiple year tracking? (Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophrys [sic] and Cory’s Shearwater Calonectris borealis)

James Grecian:  Linking remote sensing and geolocation data to understand the impact of climatic change on seabird migration (Broad-billed Prion Pachyptila vittata)

Tim Guildford:  10 years tracking Man [sic] Shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus)

Richard Phillips:  Incidence and implications of individual variation in movement and at-sea activity patterns of seabirds (albatrosses)

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 06 March 2015