Applications are invited from previously disadvantaged South African citizens for the above full-time MSc research scholarship at the University of Cape Town’s Percy FitzPatrick Institute, a world-renowned, national Centre of Excellence (CoE) in ornithological research with a strong emphasis on postgraduate studies (click here).

The successful applicant will focus on understanding how breeding performance interacts with the extent of moult in large procellariiform seabirds.  The candidate will be supported and supervised by the Fitztitute’s Director, Peter Ryan.

Examining a Tristan Albatross wing on Gough Island, photograph from the FitzPatrick Institute

“Moult is one of the major annual constraints faced by birds, and large birds in particular struggle to accommodate moult in their annual cycle because the rate of feather growth scales only weakly with body size. This creates an evolutionary dilemma for large procellariiform seabirds such as albatrosses and giant petrels which either have to overlap moulting with breeding, potentially compromising their ability to breed successfully, or only replace a subset of feathers each year, potentially leading to an accumulation of old feathers.  This conflict might lead to trade-offs between breeding and moulting, which have been inferred for North Pacific albatrosses, but not fully explored in Southern Ocean species.  In addition, most focus to date has been on primary moult patterns in these birds, but they have many more secondaries than primaries, and their strategies to replace their secondaries also warrant investigating.  The successful candidate will use photographic records of moult status of breeding albatrosses and giant petrels from Marion and Gough Islands to address these questions.”

The closing date for applications is 30 November 2016.  Read more here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 November 2016

Carolina Hospitaleche (CONICET, La Plata, Argentina) and Javier Gelfo have published in the journal Historical Biology on an old bird bone from Antarctica.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“New remains from the La Meseta (Thanetian – Lutetian) and Submeseta (Lutetian – Rupelian) formations (Seymour Island, Antarctica) are tentatively assigned to Diomedeidae and Procellariidae (Procellariiformes).  Based on the fossil record and several analyses that attempt to explain the evolutionary patterns of Diomedeidae, Notoleptos giglii gen. et sp. nov., based on a small tarsometatarsus, was an ancestral form that lived in Antarctica before the rise of large-sized albatrosses.  Subsequent environmental cooling since the late Oligocene could have selected against small body size, to the detriment of small-sized albatrosses like Notoleptos, thus favoring large body size and setting the stage for the development of the specialized albatross flight.”

Reference:

Hospitaleche, C.A. & Gelfo, J.N. 2016.  Procellariiform remains and a new species from the latest Eocene of Antarctica.  Historical Biology doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2016.1238470.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 November 2016

With 80 or so individually colour-banded Northern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea sanfordi recorded back in their mainland breeding colony at New Zealand’s Taiaroa Head, the first five eggs of the season had been laid up to yesterday (and eight by today).  One of the returned adults is Toroa, the 500th chick to hatch on Taiaroa Head, in 2007.

Proud parent?  One of the first Northern Royal Albatross eggs laid in 2016 at Taiaroa Head

Photograph from the New Zealand Department of Conservation

 Toroa, the 500th chick to hatch on Taiaroa Head, photograph by Lyndon Perriman

The webcam that followed the fortunes to fledging of chick Moana (Maori for sea) last season has now been set up to overlook a new younger pair (colour bands Blue Black (BK) for the 12-year old fostered male and Red Blue Black (RBK) for the 14-year old female) for the current breeding season.  Both birds nested for their first time together during the 2011/12 season, when they fledged their first chick.  “The 2012/13 season was their 'year off' and they spent that time apart and at sea before coming back to attempt to breed in the 2013/14 season.  They were not successful that season as their egg was infertile, so they left and later returned to breed in the 2014/15 season.  They were successful this time round, fledging their second chick. After another year off at sea during the 2015/16 season, they are now back to attempt to breed again for this 2016/17 season” (click here).

RK and RBK, the 2016 webcam pair, photograph from the New Zealand Department of Conservation

Live streaming from the "royalcam" can now be watched here.

The Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head reported recently via Facebook:

“No egg at our webcam nest yet, but viewers got to witness mating yesterday [4 November], so if this was the mating that leads to a fertile egg, then it won't be laid for about another two weeks (but note that they do mate often over this period and last night's mating may not have been the first for this pair this season.  Either way it will be at least six days after the egg is laid before we can confirm if the egg is actually fertile - done by candling, that is shining a torch through it to look for blood vessels of a developing embryo).”

Around 26 chicks from the previous breeding season have now fledged.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 November 2016

Australia’s Lord Howe Island is infested with rats and plans have been in place since 2001 to rid the island of them, so as to leave its petrel and shearwater populations (and other wildlife) in peace (click here).

In 2012 the Australian Federal and News South Wales Governments announced that funding of AUD 4.5 million from each government had been made available for the eradication to go ahead, then set for 2015.  In the event this did not happen due to divisions within the island community that slowed the process.

The latest news is that the Lord Howe Island Board has now applied to the Australian Government Minister for the Environment for approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to undertake the eradication, currently intended to take place in the austral winter of 2017 by aerial poison bait drop.

In terms of the Act a Public Environment Report has first to be produced, with a draft now open for public comment until 2 December.  ACAP Latest News will report on the outcome once further news is to hand.

Flesh-footed (left) and Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, photographs by Barry Baker and Alan Burger  

Two shearwaters that breed on the island, the Flesh-footed Puffinus carneipes and Wedge-tailed P. pacificus, have been identified as potential candidates for listing within the Albatross and Petrel Agreement.  The Lord Howe Island Group, 14.6 km² and approximately 700 km north-east of Sydney in the South Pacific, has been a World Heritage Site since 1982.  Black Rats Rattus rattus first arrived on the island via a shipwreck in 1918 and have wreaked havoc ever since for nearly a hundred years.  House Mouse Mus musculus are also present and will be targeted along with the rats

With thanks to Jonathon Barrington for information.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 04 November 2016