Colour-banding male giant petrels: how to avoid excessive band wear?

Male giant petrels Macronectes spp. are hard on their bands, as they scratch and rub then against rocks on boulder beaches while interacting with each other at food sources such as seal carcasses. In contrast female giant petrels feed mainly at sea and their bands (both metal and colour) continue to look pristine after several years.

The demographic study colony of Southern Giant Petrels M. giganteus on Gough Island has just entered its second year with 170 occupied nests in the Low Hump colony being staked out in the last two days. Nearly all the incubating birds identified by culmen measurements as males had badly worn colour bands after only a year. The level of wear made it difficult to read their codes and it looks likely their bands will start falling off before the third year of the study commences in 2012.

Female Southern Giant Petel: no discernable band wear after one year

Male Southern Giant Petrel: heavy band wear after one year
Photographs by John Cooper

So, does anyone have any suggestions how to mark male giant petrels so that a long-term study will not require them to be handled every year to read their bands, with many requiring regular rebanding?

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Click here to read an earlier news item on Gough's giant petrels.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 21 September 2011

Colour-banding male giant petrels: how to avoid excessive band wear?

The Agreement on the
Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels

ACAP Secretariat

Colour-banding male giant petrels: how to avoid excessive band wear?

The Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels

ACAP Secretariat

The Agreement on the
Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels