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Maria Petry (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia: Diversidade e Manejo de Vida Silvestre, Laboratório de Ornitologia e Animais Marinhos, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil) and colleagues have looked at which seabird species are encountered live on southern Brazilian beaches, also checking their ecological status and for evidence of anthropogenic interactions.  Their findings have been published recently in the online version of Revista Brasileira de Ornitologia.

The paper's English abstract follows:

"Seabirds are adapted to life in a marine environment, where they find food resources.  They spend most of their lives at sea and only visit continents and islands during the breeding season.  In 1997-1999 and 2007-2011, we performed 58 censuses along the coast of Rio Grande do Sul to search for live seabirds on the beach to study their ecology and impacts suffered from anthropogenic activities.  We traveled 8,610 km of beaches and recorded 183 live individuals of 12 seabird species.  The most abundant species were the Giant petrel Macronectes giganteus and the Magellanic penguin Spheniscus magellanicus, with the latter being more frequent.  We observed that seabird occurrence and feeding on the beaches occur at low frequencies, with generally only a few individuals, except for M. giganteus, which can occur in large flocks during the non-breeding season where an abundant food supply is available".

Southern Giant Petrel attending a fishing vessel in the South Atlantic
Photograph by Juan Pablo Seco Pon

Reference:

Petry, M.V., Scherer, J.F.M. & Scherer, A.L. 2012.  Ocorrência, alimentação e impactos antrópicos de aves marinhas nas praias do litoral do Rio Grande do Sul, sul do Brasil. (Occurrence and feeding habits of and human impacts on seabirds on the coast of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil).  Revista Brasileira de Ornitologia 20: 65-70.

Juan Pablo Seco Pon, ACAP South American News Correspondent, 7 June 2012