Not from around here: the Westland Petrel found at Wylie Bay in Western Australia; photo courtesy of Lynn Kidd (Esperance Roo Haven and Wildlife Rescue)

Westland Petrels are familiar with Australian coastlines, just generally not the 20 788-km stretch that is Western Australia’s.  

A member of the public recently found a Westland Petrel at Wylie Bay near Esperance, a town located on the southern coast of Western Australia. The visibly unwell bird was taken to a wildlife carer, who, not recognising the species, contacted a seabird expert who identified it as a Westland Petrel.

Endemic to New Zealand, the globally Endangered Westland Petrel Procellaria westlandica is a colonial, burrow-nesting, annually breeding species. The Westland Petrel's non-breeding range extends east from New Zealand to Chile, though sightings have been known off south-eastern Australia.

When found, the petrel weighed just 580 grams, less than half of what it should be. The wildlife carer was initially able to keep the severely underweight petrel alive, however it was discovered dead on the morning of its fourth day in care.

The bird is now in possession of the Western Australia Museum (WAM), where a taxidermist prepared the specimen for the museum’s collection; the body of the bird was skinned and preserved as a dry specimen, whilst tissue samples from muscle and liver were taken to be kept in frozen storage. 

ACAP contacted WAM’s Acting Curator of Ornithology, Dr Kenny Travouillon to ask if any further information on the specimen had come to light since the specimen had been prepared for the collection. He advised the petrel was a subadult male, and the stomach content was full of sardines, its last meal given by the carer (no plastics).

The Museum has a keen interest in documenting and preserving vagrant birds as increases in their sightings may prompt research into factors behind an escalation such as climate change.

Further details on the discovery of the Westland Petrel in Western Australia can be found in coverage given by the ABC (Australia’s national broadcaster), here.

22 February 2023

“If Your Human Ways Remain Unchanged”, Laysan Albatross, after a screenshot from the film ALBATROSS by Chris Jordan

ACAP’s fourth collaboration (Project #43) with Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN) for World Albatross Day on 19 June and its 2023 theme of ‘Plastic Pollution’, set to last for three months from the beginning of the year, is now well over halfway through, so a progress report is due  The response to this year's theme has been excellent to date, with 22 artists contributing a total of 55 artworks (view them all in an ACAP Facebook album).  Several have produced more than one, with honours currently going to Snah Kritzler, who has submitted no less than 16 evocative ballpoint pen drawings, several of which have been featured by ACAP Latest News (click here).

Apple Resonance

One ABUN artist, Apple (Chan) Resonance, has also been active, creating six artworks for the project, five of which are illustrated here, of albatrosses interacting with plastic pollution in different ways.  Originally from Manila, Philippines, she moved to Los Angeles in 2005 to practice interior design.  She now lives in Big Bear City in California, where she practices her art and writes and publishes nature-inspired books for children from her cabin home (click here).  ACAP Latest News reached out to Apple to learn more about her and her art.  Her edited reply follows.

“Illuminate Our Destiny”, Black-footed Albatross and chick, after a photograph by Eric VanderWerf

“See My Voice”, Laysan Albatross, after a photograph by Hob Osterlund

“I have always been a hesitant artist.  Originally, I only painted interiors and furniture as a professional  interior designer.  But I became passionate about watercolour painting after acquiring my first professional grade watercolour set in 2015.  Back then, I had been an edible organic gardener and only wanted to paint my vegetable harvests from the garden to illustrate and publish books, so children can get attuned to growing food from seeds.  I have become even more passionate about watercolour painting using water gathered from the rain, snow, lakes, rivers and waterfalls every place I go”.

“In Your Kind Hands’ (Flight back to the Source)”, after a scene in the film ALBATROSS by Chris Jordan

“I guess growing and painting vegetables was just a creative gateway.  I then started seeking a higher purpose and happily began painting wildlife, including birds for ABUN projects from 2019.  In 2022, I had COVID, which I found a scary experience.  Yet, this became my breakthrough not to be hesitant anymore in my creative expressions.  The real awareness that we are all going to die made me choose to become even more straightforward and direct in my life purpose to make a change through painting and book publishing until my final day comes”.

“The Shadows of Human Consumption”, after a photograph by Stefan Schoombie

You can follow Apple Resonance and her art on Facebook.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 21 February 2023

The 7th International Albatross and Petrel Conference will be held in the coastal city of Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico over 20-26 May 2024.

IAPC7 will be hosted by the Mexican environmental NGO Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas (GECI) in collaboration with Pacific Rim Conservation, the Seabird Ecology Lab, University of Barcelona and the World Seabird Union.  The announcement was made on the last day of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group held this month in San Diego, USA, where it is reported it raised “considerable excitement”.

GECI says that “lots of interesting field trips are in the planning with albatross and petrel season at that time”.

Check out the new IAPC7 website at https://www.islas.org.mx/iapc7/.

The 6th International Albatross and Petrel Conference (IAPC6) was held in Barcelona, Spain in September 2016.  The previous five conferences were held in Hobart, Tasmania in 1995, Honolulu, Hawaii in 2000, Montevideo, Uruguay in 2004, Cape Town, South Africa in 2008 and Wellington, New Zealand in 2012.

With thanks to Jacob González-Solís and Lindsay Young for information.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 20 February 2023

A pair of Laysan Albatrosses; photograph by James Lloyd. Laysan Albatrosses were one of 11 procellariiform species in the study

Alexander L. Bond (Bird Group, The Natural History Museum, Tring, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom) and Jennifer L. Lavers have published open access in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin on a method for estimating the mass of ingested plastics in seabirds. 

The paper’s abstract follows, 

“Plastics pollution has been documented for decades, yet repeatable methods for evaluating quantities are lacking. For wildlife, the mass and number of ingested plastics are widely reported, but these are not without their challenges, especially in field settings. Rapid methods for estimating the mass of ingested plastic could therefore be useful, but the relationship with the number of ingested pieces has not been explored. Using a dataset covering 1278 individuals of 11 Procellariiform species, we investigated this relationship to determine if counts could act as a proxy for the mass of ingested plastic by seabirds. Larger species ingested larger pieces of plastic, and birds that consumed more pieces also ingested items that are physically larger. Across species, sample size significantly influenced the slope of the relationship between the mass and number of ingested plastics. The mass-number relationship is species-specific, highly driven by sample size, and varies temporally.”

Reference:

Bond, A.L. & Lavers, J.L. 2023. Can the mass of plastic ingested by seabirds be predicted by the number of ingested items? Marine Pollution Bulletin. Volume 188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.114673

17 February 2023