The Australasian Seabird Group (ASG) hosts a seabird symposium at each of the Australasian Ornithological Conferences (AOCs).  The next conference, the 10th, will be held in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia over 3-5 July next year.

The conveners for the ASG symposium are This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  The ASG also holds an informal get together for seabirders at each AOC.  Abstracts for the AOC must be submitted to the conference organisers by 04 December 2018.  Seabird-related abstracts should be copied to the symposium convenors for consideration for inclusion.

The abstract for the ASG Symposium follows:

“By habitat, seabirds are arguably the most threatened group of birds. Subject to threats both ashore and at sea, and with climate change, sea water warming, fisheries interactions, prey depletion and the insidious growing presence of plastics in the marine environment, the threats will intensify over coming decades. The Australasian Region has one of the most diverse seabird faunas anywhere in the world.  Over a third of the world’s seabird species breed in or annually migrate to the Australasian Region; about 10% of all seabirds breed only in New Zealand, and Australia too has its own endemic species.

Seabirds of the Australasian Region breed from the tropics of northern Australia, south to the Australian and New Zealand sub-Antarctic Islands. Some species remain close to their breeding sites year-round, whereas others undertake migrations crossing entire ocean basins. Likewise, other seabirds breed elsewhere and visit Australasian seas between breeding seasons. Many migratory species that are protected while in Australia and New Zealand lack legal protection in international waters or during sojourns in certain foreign EEZs. These divergent movement strategies pose challenges for seabird conservation.

Australasian seabird scientists are at the forefront of research to tackle these diverse threats. In this symposium we will present new information on the threats to and management of seabirds in the Australasian Region, with presentations about tropical seabirds taking precedence. We will explore the challenges seabird specialists face in addressing the threats and managing this hugely diverse seabird fauna.”

The main aims of the Australasian Ornithologival Conferences are to:

• Promote communication and interaction among ornithologists in Australasia;

• Encourage student participation and provide networking opportunities, particularly for early-career ornithologists;

• Showcase the best ornithological research from across Australasia.

Information from Kerry-Jayne Wilson, Australasian Seabird Group.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 October 2018

The New Zealand NGO, Forest & Bird, is once more holding its annual competition to choose the country’s most popular bird; the competition has been running since 2005.  So far no ACAP-listed albatross or petrel has been chosen as New Zealand’s Bird of the Year.

This year New Zealand endemics and ACAP-listed Vulnerable Black Procellaria parkinsoni and Endangered Westland P. westlandica Petrels are both listed.  You can also vote for an albatross, with 10 threatened species that breed in New Zealand named in the category.

Two other procellariiform seabirds on the voting list are the globally Endangered Hutton’s Shearwater Puffinus huttoni and the recently described and thought Critically Endangered Whenua Hou Diving Petrel Pelecanoides whenuahouensis, known from just one breeding site on Codfish Island (Whenua Hou) in very small numbers.

Whenua Hou Diving Petrel, photograph by Jake Osborne

In November 2016 Hutton’s Shearwater suffered a major blow when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake badly affected its sole breeding habitat in South Island’s Seaward Kaikoura Range, destroying around 15% of the mountainous area and possibly killing as many as 200 000 individuals (click here).

Voting is now open: visit www.birdoftheyear.org.nz to cast your vote before 15 October for a chance to win a trip to New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands.

“Bird of the Year is a fun celebration of our native taonga [treasure], but there’s a serious side. Eighty percent of our bird species are threatened with extinction, with a third in serious trouble. They face threats ranging from habitat destruction, to predators such as stoats, possums, and rats who eat eggs, chicks, and even adult birds.”

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 02 October 2018

The globally Vulnerable Yelkouan Shearwater Puffinus yelkouan is a Mediterranean breeding endemic, known to migrate into the Black Sea.  The species’ breeding sites are considered to be only partly known with most of the known breeding population falling within France, Italy and Malta in the central Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean Science Commission (CIESM) has launched an initiative requesting (to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) documented evidence (such as overlooked scientific publications in any language as well as Ph.D. theses) of Yelkouan Shearwater breeding sites in any of the regions signalled by a question mark on the interactive map, notably along the African coastline and in the Black Sea.

A free admission is offered in return for new information to the 42nd CIESM Congress to be held in October next year in Cascais, Portugal, where a session on top predators, including seabirds, will be hosted (click here for a list of the 75 session themes).  The Commission is based in Monaco and currently has 23 member states. Its President is H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco.

The map includes a list of references to breeding records for the Yelkouan Shearwater.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 01 October 2018

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