On the Hawaiian island of Kauai there are two remarkable “albatross facts”. Firstly, much of the island’s globally Near Threatened Laysan Albatross or Mōlī Phoebastria immutabilis population breeds right among the island’s human population, making their nests and rearing their young in private gardens, back-door yards and golf courses (click here). Nowhere else in the world can an albatross be called a garden bird.

Secondly, and surely a consequence of living so close to albatrosses, is that there is a genuine affection among Kauai residents for “their” birds. Signs go up warning vehicles to drive slowly past displaying birds, lawns are mowed around occupied nests, regular appeals go out to keep dogs under control, feral cats are trapped and fences are paid for to keep pigs and dogs away from nests on rural properties.  A webcam that is aimed at an occupied nest each year can be followed live. Above these activities, some concerned citizens, such as Cathy Granholm of Princeville, are going further, recording colour bands and following the fortunes of individual birds, photographing them and posting their observations to websites, blogs and the social media, producing artworks and plush albatross toys ("plushies") and even writing books for adults and for children about the Mōlīs.

One of the most active groups is the Kauai Albatross Network, founded by author, photographer and third-year Safina Center Fellow, Hob Osterlund, and supported by members Louise Barnfield, Susan Dierker and Kim Steutermann Rogers.

Hob has supplied ACAP Latest News with the following information and photographs on an intervention to help a Laysan Albatross pair hatch an egg for the first time in years of trying unsuccessfully.

Fergie and Malia are members of a female-female Laysan pair that have been together on Kauai since at least 2010. Every year since then both their eggs get buried in the nest bowl and neither is properly incubated as a consequence. Fergie has a serious limp of unknown derivation, so it appears her attempts to kick out excess nesting materials may inadvertently cause her to dig a hole into which the eggs fall.

Following a consultation with biologists a circular ceramic tray lined with a foam pad was slid under her nest. The female-female pair was then given an egg deemed to be fertile by candling obtained from the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai by Robby Kohley and Eric Vanderwerf of Pacific Rim Conservation – and the infertile eggs removed. The two females took turns to incubate their adopted egg, which has now hatched. The chick has been named Amos.  ACAP Latest News hopes to report of Amos successfully fledging in a few months’ time.

Fergie on her nest after insertion of the blue plate under the nest - visible here

Fergie is given a fertile egg by Pacific Rim Conservation

Amos, hatched from the adopted egg, looks up from its "Blue Plate Special" nest

Photographs by Hob Osterlund

 Hob writes of her fellow network members: "Susan Dierker created the plushies and wrote a children's book, Albatross of Kauai: The Story of Kaloakulua.  Kim Steutermann Rogers sells photographs on https://www.albatographer.com/ to raise funds for Mōlī conservation.  Louise Barnfield posts messages and photos on Facebook of the birds nesting in her yard".

Click here to read about artifical nests for albatrosses in Australia.

With thanks to Hob Osterlund, Kauai Albatross Network.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 March 2018

Martyna Syposz (Department of Biology, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK) and colleagues have an open-access paper accepted for the journal Ibis on light-affected groundings of Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Grounding of thousands of newly fledged petrels and shearwaters (family Procellariidae) in built-up areas due to artificial light is a global problem. Due to their anatomy these grounded birds find it difficult to take off from built-up areas, and many fall victim to predation, cars, dehydration or starvation. This research investigated a combination of several factors that may influence the number of Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus groundings in a coastal village of Scotland located close to a nesting site for this species. A model was developed that used meteorological variables and moon cycle to predict the daily quantity of birds that were recovered on the ground. The model, explaining 46.32% of the variance of the data, revealed how new moon, and strong onshore winds influence grounding. To a lesser extent, visibility conditions can also have an effect on grounding probabilities. The analysis presented in this study can improve rescue campaigns of not only Manx Shearwaters but also other species attracted to the light pollution by predicting conditions leading to an increase in the number of groundings. It could also inform local authorities when artificial light intensity needs to be reduced.”

Manx Shearwater, photograph by Nathan Fletcher

Reference:

Syposz, M., Gonçalves, F., Carty, M., Hoppitt, W. & Manco, F. 2018. Factors influencing Manx Shearwater grounding on the west coast of Scotland. Ibis. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/ibi.12594.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 06 March 2018

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 06 March 2018

Hanna Granroth-Wilding (Department of Biosciences Division of Ecology and Evolution, University of Helsinki, Finland) and Richard Phillips have an accepted paper in the journal Ibis that considers segregation within and between the two species of ACAP-listed giant petrels Macronectes spp.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Biological communities are shaped by competition between and within species. Competition is often reduced by inter- and intra-specific specialization on resources, such as differences in foraging areas or time, allowing similar species to coexist and potentially contributing to reproductive isolation. Here, we examine the simultaneous role of temporal and spatial foraging segregation within and between two sympatric sister species of seabirds, Northern Macronectes halli and Southern M. giganteus Giant Petrels. These species show marked sexual size dimorphism and allochrony (with earlier breeding by Northern Giant Petrels), but this is the first study to test for differences in foraging behaviours and areas across the entire breeding season both between the two species and between the sexes. We tracked males and females of both species in all breeding stages at Bird Island, South Georgia, to test how foraging distribution, behaviour and habitat use varies between and within species in biological time (incubation, brood-guard or post-brood stages) and in absolute time (calendar date). Within each breeding stage, both species took trips of comparable duration to similar areas, but due to breeding allochrony they segregated temporally. Northern Giant Petrels had a somewhat smaller foraging range than Southern Giant Petrels, reflecting their greater exploitation of local carrion and probably contributing to their recent higher population growth. Within species, segregation was spatial, with females generally taking longer, more pelagic trips than males. Both sexes of both species showed unexpectedly plastic foraging behaviour, and there was little evidence of inter-specific differences in habitat use. Thus, in giant petrels, temporal segregation reduces inter-specific competition and sexual segregation reduces intra-specific competition. These results demonstrate how both specialization and dynamic changes in foraging strategies at different scales underpin resource division within a community.”

Southern Giant Petrel, photograph by Greg Hofmeyr

Feeding Northern Giant Petrel, photograph by Marienne de Villiers

Reference:

Granroth-Wilding, H.M.V. & Phillips^, R.A. 2018. Segregation in space and time explains the coexistence of two sympatric sub-Antarctic petrels. Ibis doi: 10.1111/ibi.12584.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 05 March 2018

Henri Weimerskirch (Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, Villiers-en-Bois, France) has published in the Journal of Animal Ecology on linking population dynamics and foraging ecology of globally Vulnerable Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans.

The paper’s summary follows:

“1.Population dynamics and foraging ecology are two fields of the population ecology that are generally studied separately. Yet foraging determines allocation processes and therefore demography. Studies on Wandering albatrosses Diomedea exulans over the past 50 years have contributed to better understand the links between population dynamics and foraging ecology. This paper reviews how these two facets of population ecology have been combined to better understand ecological processes, but also have contributed fundamentally for the conservation of this long-lived threatened species.

2.Wandering albatross research has combined a 50 year long-term study of marked individuals with two decades of tracking studies that have been initiated on this species, favoured by its large size and tameness.

3.At all stages of their life history the body mass of individuals plays a central role in allocation processes, in particular in influencing adult and juvenile survival, decisions to recruit into the population or to invest into provisioning the offspring or into maintenance.

4.Strong age-related variations in demographic parameters are observed and are linked to age-related differences in foraging distribution and efficiency. Marked sex specific differences in foraging distribution, foraging efficiency and changes in mass over life time are directly related to the strong sex specific investment in breeding and survival trajectories of the two sexes, with body mass playing a pivotal role especially in males.

5.Long-term study has allowed determining the sex specific and age specific demographic causes of population decline, and the tracking studies have been able to derive where and how these impacts occur, in particular the role of long line fisheries”.

Wandering Albatross, photograph by Kate Lawrence

Reference:

Weimerskirch, H. 2018. Linking demographic processes and foraging ecology in wandering albatross - conservation implications.  Journal of Animal Ecology doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.12817.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 02 March 2018