Bryce Robinson (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Migratory Bird Management, Anchorage, Alaska, USA) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Marine Ornithology on four Short-tailed Shearwaters Ardenna tenuirostris (Least Concern) feeding on a beach-cast salmon in Alaska.

Short-tailed Shearwaters feeding on a beach-cast salmon, August 2017; photograph by Gerrit Vyn

The paper’s abstract follows:

“We report the first documentation of off-water foraging by the Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel Oceanodroma furcata and Short-tailed Shearwater Ardenna tenuirostris, a behavior not previously documented in any member of the families Hydrobatidae or Procellariidae. Over a two-week period in September 2016, we regularly observed individuals of these species over land on an extensive intertidal zone on the Bristol Bay coast of the Alaska Peninsula. We documented irregular feeding behaviors by storm-petrels including pattering over shallow water and sand, digging into sand to uncover food items, and feeding on beach-cast fish. We revisited the site in August 2017 and did not observe storm-petrels, but we observed four shearwaters feeding on a beach-cast fish. The aberrant feeding behaviors, paucity of stomach contents and emaciated body condition of salvaged and collected birds, together with patterns between bird occurrence and wind speed and direction, indicate to us that these birds were blown to shore while weakened by food stress or compromised health. We further suggest that these aberrant feeding behaviors may be related to massive seabird die-offs that occurred in this region during 2014-2016, die-offs in which Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels have heretofore not been reported as a species affected by this phenomenon.”

Short-tailed Shearwater, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Reference:

Robinson, B.W., Decicco, L.H., Johnson, J.A. & Ruthrauff, D.R. 2018.  Unusual foraging observations associated with seabird die-offs in Alaska.  Marine Ornithology 46: 149-153.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 28 September 2018

Lights have gone on once more this month for American football (gridiron) on Friday nights on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, marking the season’s first games within the globally Endangered Newell’s Shearwater Puffinus newelli fledging season.  However, games throughout October and November will be held on Saturday afternoons instead to avoid fledglings being attracted to and downed by ballpark flood lights.

A fledgling Newell's Shearwater, photograph by Eric Vanderwerf

“Saturday [15 September] marked the beginning of that fledgling season [ends 15 December] , when seabird chicks that have been raised in burrows all around Kauai start making their way toward the ocean, and historically stadium lights have been an obstacle in their paths.  The birds usually use the moon as a guiding light on their journey, but they can fixate on things like stadium lights and circle them until they fall to the ground.

For the past seven years, night football has been a thing of the past, but that changed after the county spent millions retrofitting ballpark lights in county parks.  It was one of the things done to comply with a 2010 Justice Department plea agreement in which the county and Kauai Island Utility Cooperative admitted to violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

In addition to things like retrofitted park lighting, officials used knowledge of breeding cycle timing and the moon phase to decide which night football games could be played without causing harm to the endangered seabirds.  … night games on the last three weekends of September were considered low risk.   Night games in October and November were considered high risk.”

An estimated 75% of breeding Newell's Shearwaters, a species endemc to the Hawaiian Islands, breeds on Kauai.  Between 1999 and2001 it is estimated there has been a 60% decrease in the Kauai popularion.

Read more here and here.

Save our Shearwaters, a programme funded by the KIUC and based out of the Kauai Humane Society, has been rehabilitating and releasing downed seabird fledglings on the island since its creation in 1979. Every year, seabirds downed by lights are collected in the breeding season by residents and visitors and dropped off at 11 aid stations around Kauai.

A rehabilitated Newell's Shearwater gets released

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 27 September 2018

On the Hawaiian island of Kauai the Save Our Shearwaters (SOS) team of the Kauai Humane Society has been supplementary feeding globally Near Threatened Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis chicks that are known or are thought to have lost a parent by death or injury for the last four years.  To date five single-parent chicks have received extra feeds, leading to four of them fledging.  Their individual stories follow.

At the beginning of April 2015 Cathy Granholm, albatross monitor for a golf course in the Princeville community on Kauai’s north shore, was made aware that one of the adults (band numbers K164/1517-86432) of a Laysan Albatross breeding pair had been “taken” (killed) as bycatch in a long-line fishery approximately six weeks previously. Following supplementary feeding the chick fledged in good condition.  This coming 2018/2019 breeding season will be the first that this bird might return to Kauai as a three-year-old.

In 2015 a breeding Laysan Albatross appeared to have collided with a fence that had been erected while the bird was at sea and its resulting injuries required treatment at the SOS facility. The parent was in care for 22 days and while the adult was recovering, supplemental feeds were given to its chick.  A reunion video showed that the adult did not fly out immediately on release but went over to the chick and spent some time with it before heading out to sea. Unfortunately a check on the chick a week later found it dead.  There was too much decomposition to determine the cause of death but it was found right next to an area of the fence in a spot where dogs on the other side could potentially have got through.

In the third case of supplementary feeding a breeding adult on a private property on the north shore was injured in early April 2016 during a tagging study and it later died while in rehabilitative care.  The chick successfully fledged between 8-12 July 2016.

The fourth case is of a chick banded H694 and known as Kiamanu that fledged over 13/14 July 2018.  Because the nest was under 24-hour watch by an “albicam” it was determined that the chick's male parent had not returned in quite some time.  On assessment the chick was severely underweight and behind in its growth.  It was fed every two to three days throughout the remainder of the chick-rearing period although closer to fledging the feeds were spaced farther apart. The camera operators were able to let the feeder Christa McLeod know when the surviving female parent was back and feeding the chick so she could time the feeds to not interfere with the remaining parent and risk regurgitation by a freshly fed chick

A second 2018 chick was on the Princeville property of Cathy Granholm who realized that the male was not returning prior to hatching. The female had incubated the egg for 46 days and then brooded the hatched chick for a further 10 days before finally succumbing to the needs of her body and left to feed herself at sea for the first time in 56 days.  Marilou Knight was the feeder for this chick which fledged on 2 July 2018, the fifth to do so since supplementary feeding of Laysan Albatross chicks by SOS commenced in 2015.

The birds were fed a fish slurry composed of several species of fish with additional oil and supplemental vitamins. Squid forms part of the slurry as well but it is not a major component.

Save Our Shearwater’s wildlife rehabilitation activities are conducted under permit and with the Hawaiian State’s and landowners’ permission.

Tracy Anderson, Save Our Shearwaters, Kauai Humane Society & John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 September 2018

The 2015 Princeville golf course chick, photograph by Tracy Anderson

A meal prepared for Kiamanu in 2018, photograph by Christa McLeod

Marilou Knight feeding a single-parent chick in 2018, photograph by Cindy Granholm

Christa McLeod with Kiamanu in 2018, photograph by Hob Osterlund

Eighty years ago on 22 September 1938, late in the afternoon, Lance Richdale watched the first Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi chick fledge from New Zealand’s Taiaroa Head.  Since that beginning in 1938 the colony had produced 500 chicks by 2007.

The Royal Albatross Centre paid tribute to Lance Richdale by hosting a talk by Neville Peat, author of Richdale’s bibliography, on the anniversary date last weekend.  Richdale in 1938 camped for extended periods beside the solitary egg and then the chick, which he nicknamed ‘Sprog’, observing and protecting it until it fledged. Without his dedicated efforts it is doubtful there would now be a royal albatross colony on the mainland of New Zealand’s South Island.

View the 59-minute video of Neville Peat’s lecture “Lance Richdale “Seabird Genius” Albatross Saviour”.

Listen to a radio interview with Otago Peninsula Trust marketing manager, Sophie Barker on the 80-year anniversary here.

Last week bells rang in nearby Dunedin to celebrate the first Northern Royal Albatross returning for the 2018/19 breeding season as the last two (named Biggles and Rocky) of the 2017/18 cohort of 13 chicks prepare to fledge for this biennially-breeding species (click here).  Keep up to date on the albatrosses’ comings and goings at Taiaroa Head on the Royal Albatross Centre Facebook page.

The Northern Royal Albatross or Toroa, endemic to New Zealand, has a national conservation status of Naturally Uncommon and a global status of Endangered.

With thanks to the Royal Albatross Centre.

Reference:

Peat, Neville 2011.  Seabird Genius.  The story of L.E. Richdale, the Royal Albatross, and the Yellow-eyed Penguin.  Dunedin: Otago University Press.  288 pp.  Paperback. ISBN 978 1 877578 11 3.  NZD 45.00. Read ACAP’s review here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 25 September 2018

PORTFOLIO: First successful breeding attempt, Taiaroa Head, 1938; photographs by Lance Richdale from the Royal Albatross Centre