Water is planned to be trucked to Taiaroa Head on New Zealand’s Otago Peninsula to help its Endangered Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi chicks survive the high temperatures expected from the current El Niño weather conditions.

The Otago Peninsula Trust is raising funds to truck in additional water for a recently-installed irrigation system used to spray nests to cool the birds down so they do not overheat.

Northern Royal Albatross and chick at Taiaroa Head, photograph by Lyndon Perriman

Staff and volunteers at the Royal Albatross Centre anticipate the first chick of the season to hatch out this week.  Last year there were 26 chicks — the second best season —at Taiaroa Head, this year 29 fertile eggs are being incubated.

Read more here.

For an earlier ACAP Latest News item on hot albatrosses click here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 13 January 2015

Filming for Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens took place over two weeks during the seabird breeding season on the uninhabited Irish island of Skellig Michael.  The island lies 12 km off the coast of County Kelly in south-west Ireland and is a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Site (since 1996) that was once home to a 6th Century Christian monastery made up of stone “beehive huts” for hermit monks.  Skellig Michael supports breeding colonies of some 10 000 pairs of European Storm Petrel Hydrobates pelagicus (10% of the national population) and when last surveyed 738 pairs of Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus.

Skellig Michael

Manx Shearwater fledgling, photograph by Jaclyn Pearson

Irish Heritage Minister Heather Humphreys granted permission for up to 180 Star Wars cast and crew members to travel to the island to shoot the new film. Storm petrel and shearwater chicks would then still have been in their burrows.  Although there seems no definite reports of harm being caused to the island’s seabirds the filming has raised a level of controversy (click here).

Filming for an earlier Star Wars episode also took place on Skellig Michael and plans are now afoot for the dynasty to return to the island for Episode VIII (click here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 January 2016

A Critically Endangered Waved Albatross Phoebastria irrorata was successfully released at sea off Chorrillos, Lima, Peru recently, following rehabilitation in captivity by Proyecto Golondrina de la Tempestad de Collar.

Photographs from Proyecto Golondrina de la Tempestad de Collar

Proyecto Golondrina de la Tempestad de Collar is a Peruvian project involving the conservation, research and education of the Data Deficient Ringed or Hornby's Storm Petrel Oceanodroma [or Hydrobates] hornbyi.

“Our main focus are rescue and recovery actions of these ocean birds found lost in urban areas outside their natural habitat.  While rescuing them, we can collect information, contributing to learn more about this little known species and its habitat, and to generate proposals to reduce the possible causes of their findings in cities".

Read more on the project’s efforts to conserve the little-known Ringed Storm Petrel here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 11 January 2015

An Endangered Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi with an injured left eye and in poor body condition found at Moa Point, near Wellington’s Airport, New Zealand last week was taken to Wellington Zoo by Department of Conservation workers.  The zoo’s avian specialist, Dr Baukje Lenting and her team operated on the injured bird in the veterinary hospital The Nest Te Kōhanga on Friday.

"The injured eye was too damaged to recover, so it was removed … to prevent the risk of infection."  A spokeswoman for the zoo said the bird was thought to be a female but vets were still working out its gender.  The zoo plans to nurse the bird back to full health and weight before releasing it back into the wild.

Read more here.  The Wellington Zoo's hospital has previously treated a Northern Royal Albatross that had an injured wing (click here). 

There are several cases of seemingly healthy one-eyed albatrosses, of at least four species, being photographed in the wild (click here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 January 2016