A Light Mantled Albatross Phoebetria palpebrata (globally Near Threatened and nationally Declining) was found “in the middle of a busy intersection” a couple of hundred metres inland in Petone, a suburb of Lower Hutt on the north shore of Wellington Harbour this month.  It was then taken into captivity by The Nest Te Kōhanga animal hospital at New Zealand’s Wellington Zoo where it was found to be suffering from a thin body condition, weighing only 1.6 kg, and dehydration (click here).

The bird “received supportive care, pain relief and fluids as [it was] very weak and underweight.  Yesterday we did a full health check, including X-rays and blood tests. Since his arrival, he’s much stronger, brighter and has gained weight thanks to the amazing work of our Vet team.”  However, the bird did not survive: “We're sad to report that the albatross we were caring for at The Nest Te Kōhanga passed away … our Vet team conducted a post mortem and found that the cause of death was a blockage at the exit of the stomach, caused by two small pieces of plastic.  Due to the obstruction, the bird wasn’t able to absorb any nutrients from his food and that was likely causing his emaciation.”  Information from Wellington Zoo’s Facebook page.

It has been suggested the larger item found in the albatross stomach is a rubber ring used for docking the tails of lambs

Ingestion of plastic items, sometimes leading to death, has been reported previously for a number of albatross species, notably for the Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis of the North Pacific.  Watch a video of a Southern Royal Albatross Diomedea epomophora that died after swallowing a 500-ml plastic bottle – as previously reported in ACAP Latest News.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 28 June 2020

At the Eleventh Meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee (AC11) held in Florianópolis, Brazil during May 2019, Tatiana Neves, the founder and General Coordinator of the Brazilian NGO, Projeto Albatroz and Vice Chair of the ACAP Advisory Committee, sat down with ACAP’s honorary Information Officer to chat informally about the history of the Albatross and Petrel Agreement.  The 13 and a half-minute video comes with Portuguese subtitles.  For detailed information on ACAP’s early history, including the activities that led to it coming into force, consult the publication referenced below.

Tatiana Neves and John Cooper in Florianópolis, Brazil at the Eleventh Meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee

Tatiana Neves, do Projeto Albatroz, entrevista o oficial de informações da ACAP sobre a história do Acordo

Na décima primeira reunião do Comitê Consultivo da ACAP (AC11), realizada em Florianópolis, Brasil em maio de 2019, Tatiana Neves, fundadora e coordenadora geral da ONG brasileira, Projeto Albatroz, sentou-se com o oficial de informações honorário da ACAP para conversar informalmente sobre a história do Acordo de Albatroz e Petrel, resultando no vídeo a seguir.

With thanks to Projeto Albatroz.

Reference:

Cooper, J., Baker, G.B., Double, M.C., Gales, R., Papworth, W., Tasker, M.L. & Waugh, S.M. 2006.  The Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels: rationale, history, progress and the way forward.  Marine Ornithology 34: 1-5.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 June 2020

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Wandering Albatross in the Drake Passage, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Thomas Clay (School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, UK) and colleagues have published open access in the Journal of Animal Ecology on aspects of flight behaviour in relation to wind by incubating Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“·  In a highly dynamic airspace, flying animals are predicted to adjust foraging behaviour to variable wind conditions to minimize movement costs.

• Sexual size dimorphism is widespread in wild animal populations, and for large soaring birds which rely on favourable winds for energy‐efficient flight, differences in morphology, wing loading and associated flight capabilities may lead males and females to respond differently to wind. However, the interaction between wind and sex has not been comprehensively tested.
• We investigated, in a large sexually dimorphic seabird which predominantly uses dynamic soaring flight, whether flight decisions are modulated to variation in winds over extended foraging trips, and whether males and females differ.
• Using GPS loggers we tracked 385 incubation foraging trips of wandering albatrosses Diomedea exulans , for which males are c . 20% larger than females, from two major populations (Crozet and South Georgia). Hidden Markov models were used to characterize behavioural states—directed flight, area‐restricted search (ARS) and resting—and model the probability of transitioning between states in response to wind speed and relative direction, and sex.
• Wind speed and relative direction were important predictors of state transitioning. Birds were much more likely to take off (i.e. switch from rest to flight) in stronger headwinds, and as wind speeds increased, to be in directed flight rather than ARS. Males from Crozet but not South Georgia experienced stronger winds than females, and males from both populations were more likely to take‐off in windier conditions.
• Albatrosses appear to deploy an energy‐saving strategy by modulating taking‐off, their most energetically expensive behaviour, to favourable wind conditions. The behaviour of males, which have higher wing loading requiring faster speeds for gliding flight, was influenced to a greater degree by wind than females. As such, our results indicate that variation in flight performance drives sex differences in time–activity budgets and may lead the sexes to exploit regions with different wind regimes.”

Reference:

Clay, T.A., Joo, R., Weimerskirch, H., Phillips, R.A., den Ouden, O., Basille, M., Clusella‐Trullas, S., Assink, J.D. & Patrick, S.C. 2020.  Sex‐specific effects of wind on the https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/environmental-sciences/ a sexually dimorphic soaring bird.  Journal of Animal Ecology doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13267.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 June 2020

The Bounty Islands are bare, windswept and home to thousands of Salvin’s Albatross

The following ‘conservation blog’ was posted on last week’s World Albatross Day as part of New Zealand’s celebrations of the event.  It is reposted here with the kind approval of the Department of Conservation (DOC).

It would be hard to imagine a tougher place to raise a family than the Bounty Islands, a cluster of bare rocks in the middle of the Southern Ocean.  Four days by boat from New Zealand, these granite domes are cold, wave-swept and most lack any vegetation larger than lichens.

But the Bountys are sought-after real estate for [globally Vulnerable] Salvin’s Albatrosses Thalassarche salvini.  Tens of thousands of the stern-looking birds cram onto the islands each spring to hatch a single egg in a nest made of the most plentiful material available – poo.

Researchers Graham Parker, Kalinka Rexer-Huber and Paul Sagar have spent a few precious days on the island in the last two summers to help solve some major mysteries about the species: how many breeding birds there are, and where they go on their annual migration.

“Just getting onto the islands is a mission.  We wait offshore for calm enough conditions to land, though it’s more of a full body contact scramble than a landing!  We’re exceedingly cautious about picking the weather because it’s such a long way away from help if anything went wrong.”

Camping is off-limits to avoid disturbing the wildlife.  Graham says even stepping onto the island feels very intrusive.  “It’s a busy and noisy place and we can’t help but disturb things because it’s so densely populated.  We have to be very careful to get our work done efficiently with minimum impact, then leave them all to it.”

The team is using new technology – drones and satellite-transmitting GPS trackers – to find out more about the Salvin’s Albatross, a species that is as endangered as our Kakapo.

Drone images are proving to be a better way to count the number of breeding birds than the previous aerial photos taken from aircraft.  “Those photos tended to be quite fuzzy and indistinct, but drones can fly close to the islands and get some fantastically crisp images.  They should give us a much more refined estimate of the population.”

Kalinka says what you count is really important.  “From a conservation perspective, it’s the breeding pairs that matter because they’re producing the next generation.  But there are lots of non-breeding birds around and some are sitting on nests with no eggs, which you can’t tell from an aerial photo.  So any counts from aerial photos need to be calibrated by recording the actual proportion of nesters vs pretenders on the ground in a defined area.”

Nesting Salvin’s Albatross

Salvin’s Albatrosses are accidentally caught in trawl and longline fisheries in New Zealand waters and internationally.  In the 2017–18 fishing year, estimates are that 288 Salvin’s were caught in New Zealand trawl fisheries, and a further 64 in our longline fisheries.  The number caught in international waters or by other countries is not known.

“Birds and fishers go to the same places because they’re after the same resource – fish.  If we know where the birds are going, we’re in a better position to reduce interactions and keep more birds alive.”

Two different types of trackers were attached to birds as a comparison.  The data show exactly where they go on their annual 7000-km migration to the coast of South America.

Holding an albatross so the tracker can be attached. Kalinka says they are the size of a medium-size dog but much lighter.  Photographs by Bill Morris

“We put satellite transmitters on 30 birds.  These cost thousands of dollars each but show us the birds’ location in real time and don’t have to be retrieved (they are attached to back feathers that eventually fall out).  The other trackers – geolocators – are only worth a couple of hundred each but have to be collected to get the stored data back.”

One bird’s tracker stopped transmitting in New Zealand waters and another stopped in South America (that device may have run out of battery).  Data from the geolocators are still being analysed.

An animation shows the satellite transmitter data from five Salvin’s Albatrosses as they left the Bounty Islands and headed north to New Zealand then crossed the Pacific Ocean to South America

“There’s now tons of support for conservation on land, but there’s a disconnect with conservation at sea.  These magnificent birds aren’t as easy to see as our bush birds or dolphins, but they’re just as much our taonga [treasured possession] and our responsibility.”

Graham and Kalinka’s take-home is that we can all do something: we can be more discerning about the fish we buy.  “Ask where it came from, how it was caught and what the company is doing to stop birds being killed.  And take any opportunity you can to get out on the water and say hi to these incredible animals!”

Parker Conservation was sub-contracted by NIWA for this research, which was funded by DOC.  Paul Sagar, a NIWA scientist, has a long history of seabird research in New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic region.

View a 12-minute video made on the trip under DOC research permit by photographer, Bill Morris and read an illustrated account by Thomas Mattern (see reference below).

While on the island, the research team displayed one of the first World Albatross Day banners, now entered into the ‘WAD2020 Banner Challenge’, along with many others from New Zealand and elsewhere.

Reference:

Mattern, T. 2020. Seabirds in the ‘snow’ – 2019 Bounty Islands expedition.  Birds New Zealand 26: 10-15.

With thanks to Igor Debski, New Zealand Department of Conservation & Graham Parker, Parker Conservation.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 24 June 2020, updated 25 June 202h0