To date, 82 illustrated accounts of sites which support a breeding population of at least one ACAP-listed species have been posted to ACAP Latest News since February 2013. All known breeding sites for Argentina, Australia, Ecuador, Mexico, Norway and South Africa have now been covered, including ones with extinct colonies, such as Bouvet Island.

Approximately 50 sites remain to be written up. These include:

Chile: Islas Guafo, Ildefonso, Mocha, Robinson Crusoe and Santa Clara

France: Iles Apôtres, Cochons, de l’Est and Pingouins (Crozet Islands)

Japan: Mukojima (Ogasawara Islands)

New Zealand: Chatham (translocation site), Forty-Fours and Three Kings

Spain: Conills, Espartar, Vedrà and Vedranell (Ibiza, Balearic Islands)

USA: Barking Sands (Kauai), James Campbell Wildlife Refuge (Oahu; translocation site), French Frigate Shoals, Gardner Pinnacles, Lisianski, Ka’ula, Necker, Niihau and Pearl & Hermes Reef

Disputed Territories: Remaining individual islands in the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)*, South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur)* and the Senkaku Islands

Antarctic Continent: Remaining colonies of Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus on and around the Antarctic Peninsula

White-phase Southern Giant Petrel on Signy Island (ACAP Breeding Site No. 32), photograph by Michael Dunn

On the second day of its meeting in La Serena, Chile ACAP’s Advisory Committee adopted the report of its Population and Conservation Status Working Group (PaCSWG3), which met last week.  The Advisory Committee agreed with its working group that the above and any other identified sites be written up under the guidance of ACAP’s Information Officer, John Cooper and posted to ACAP Latest News by the time of the Tenth Meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC10) next year.

During the PaCSWG meeting offers of help with compiling the outstanding site descriptions came from Patricia Pereira Serafini (Brazil, for Southern Giant Petrels on the Antarctic Peninsula), Verónica López (Chile, Pink-footed Shearwater Puffinus (Ardenna) creatopus), Juan Pablo Seco-Pon (Argentina), Sally Poncet (Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)*) and South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur)*), Igor Debski (New Zealand), Cristián Suazo (Chile; albatross colonies), Amanda Kuepfer (Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)*) and Beth Flint (USA; Hawaiian Islands).  French marine ornithologists will be approached seeking support for the outstanding accounts for their sub-Antarctic islands, and, of course, any other volunteers willing to be involved will be welcomed. J.M. "Pep" Arcos of Spain is currently drafting the remaining Spanish accounts for the Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus.

Each breeding site account normally includes:

1. A brief description of the locality with its name, locality, size, habitat and vegetation,

2. Information on breeding ACAP-listed species: names, numbers, trends and monitoring efforts,

3. Conservation status: management plan, nature reserve, Important Bird Area and World Heritage Site status and alien control/eradication efforts past, present or planned,

4. Up to 10 or so selected references, and

5. Five to eight photographs with captions showing the locality, its habitats, colonies and ACAP species.

Once the outstanding accounts have been written it is intended that the earlier ones will be updated where necessary and all will be brought together into a single document.  It is expected that AC10 will then discuss quite how best to publish an ACAP breeding sites compilation.

Reference:

Cooper, J. 2016.  A Proposal to Compile the ACAP Breeding Site Accounts into a Single ACAP Publication.  Third Meeting of the Population and Conservation Status Working Group La Serena, Chile, 5 - 6 May 2016.  PaCSWG3 Inf 05.  2 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 11 May 2016

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.

The Ninth Meeting of ACAP's Advisory Committee started yesterday in the Hotel Club La Serena, La Serena, Chile.  The meeting was opened with welcoming speeches from Carlos Montenegro Silva, María Angela Barbieri and Javier Chavez of Chile.

From left: Carlos Montenegro Silva (Chile), Mark Tasker (Advisory Committee Acting Chair), María Angela Barbieri (Chile) and and Javier Chavez (Chile) at the opening ceremony

Mark Tasker (UK) acted as Chair, with Marco Favero attending his first Advisory Committee as the recently appointed Executive Secretary.  The first day proceeded smoothly and by closing the Chair announced with satisfaction that the meeting had moved farther along the week-long agenda than had been expected.

Halfway through the day the opportunity was taken for a group photograph.  In the evening the meeting's Chilean hosts threw a welcome reception and gave delegates and observers a gift of a bottle of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon to take home with them.

Mark Tasker (UK) and Jorge Azocar (Chile) toast each other at the welcome reception

AC9's deliberations will continue today and on Wednesday.  On Thursday the attendees will be taken inland on an excursion and Friday will be devoted to adopting the meeting's report.

Click here to access the meeting's agenda and the several Documents and Information Papers being tabled at AC9.  Note that some of these are password protected.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 May 2016

To mark the holding this week of the Ninth Meeting of ACAP’s Advisory Committee in La Serena, Chile, Portuguese-based cartoonist Marc Parchow Figueiredo has produced another specially commissioned cartoon in his Qual Albatroz series.

Back in July 2013 Marc produced an albatross cartoon especially for ACAP Latest News and also then wrote about himself, a story worth repeating here.

“I'm half Portuguese, half German and born in France. I've worked in the UK and I'm a big fan of UK literature and humour.  I got into albatrosses as a child growing up in Germany.  I suppose it must have been a book showing the comparative wingspan of birds.  That must have struck something in me.  I grew up to be very interested in nature and conservation issues, but followed a creative career rather than biology - though the choice was hard.  Later I started my own publishing company in Portugal and was stuck for a name.  I wanted something nonsensical and funny, so out of a whim I chose "Qual Albatroz" (What Albatross) as the name of my firm.  It's a reference to something from the Douglas Adams book The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul and refers to the albatross in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Some time after that I started a project with the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds (SPEA) and the idea was to publish a small book about the albatross. We'd ask Portuguese artists to collaborate and to send in some work about the albatross.  Poetry, comics, text - anything really. The profits from the sale went to the BirdLife Save the Albatross Project. It wasn't much and we only printed 500 books, but it helped the albatross and Portuguese artists.  I myself participated in the book with two or thre comic strips, and they were the first cartoons I drew about the somewhat unusual albatrosses. It was in 2008. Since then I've been continuing to draw them fairly, regularly translating them from Portuguese to English.  My idea with the albatross cartoons was to create an interesting way to get people to care about albatrosses and to want to find out more.

Amidst  all this the funny (and sad) thing is that I've never seen a live albatross. That is still my dream.  Until then I'll just draw them as I imagine them to be.”

With grateful thanks to Marc of Qual Albatroz for continuing to support ACAP - and albatross conservation - with his cartoons.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 May 2016

Akiko Shoji (Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, UK) and colleagues have published in the journal Ibis on diving in the Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus to “nearly” 55 m.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The diving capabilities of the Procellariformes [sic] remain the least understood component of avian diving physiology.  Due to their relatively small size, shearwaters may have high oxygen consumption rates during diving relative to their available oxygen stores.  Dive performance in this group should be strongly limited by the trade-off between oxygen consumption and oxygen stores, and shearwaters could be a good model group for testing predictions of dive theory.  Many earlier measurements of shearwater dive behaviour relied on observations from the surface or potentially biased technology, and it is only recently that diving behaviour has been observed using electronic recorders for many of the clades within the family.  The diving behaviour of Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus breeding in Wales, United Kingdom, was studied on a large sample of birds using time-depth-temperature recorders deployed on chick-rearing shearwaters in July and August over three years (2009-2011).  Light availability apparently limited diving as dives only occurred between 04:00 and 19:00 GMT.  All individuals routinely dived deeper than traditionally assumed, to a mean maximum depth of 31 m and occasionally down to nearly 55 m.  We compiled all available data for a comparison of the dive depth across shearwater species.  There was a positive allometric relationship between maximum dive depth and body mass across Puffinus and Ardenna shearwater species, as expected, but only if samples of fewer than two individuals were excluded.  The large intra-specific range in maximum dive depth in our study illustrates that apparent diversity in diving performance across species must be interpreted cautiously.”

Manx Shearwater at sea, photograph by Nathan Fletcher

Reference:

Shoji, A., Dean, B., Kirk, H., Freeman, R., Perrins, C.M. & Guilford, T.C. 2016.  The diving behaviour of the Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus.  Ibis doi: 10.1111/ibi.12381.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 May 2016