Latest Seabird Stories
The Nazca booby, a Galápagos Island seabird, emerges from its shell ready to kill its brother or sister. Wake Forest University biologists and their colleagues have linked the murderous behavior to high levels of testosterone and other male hormones found in the hatchlings.The study appears in the June 18 edition of the online journal PLoS ONE.The elevated levels of male hormones, called androgens, increase aggression in both male and female chicks and prepare the birds to fight to the...
By Scott Hadly, Ventura County Star, Calif. Jun. 6--Federal wildlife biologists are proposing to kill all wild cats now living on Navy-owned San Nicolas Island to protect endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to use padded leg traps and hunters to eradicate what are believed to be 100 to 200 feral cats. Dogs also would be used to flush out some of the harder-to-catch cats, according to the plan. The wild cats would be shot or given a lethal injection on the...
Seabirds must switch to less nutritious terrestrial prey or go hungryYou might think that stocking the Great Lakes with things like trout and salmon would be good for the herring gull. The birds often eat from the water, so it would be natural to assume that more fish would mean better dining. But a new report published in the April journal of Ecology by the Ecological Society of America says that the addition of species such as exotic salmon and trout to the area has not been good for the...
A new study has found that Antarctica's Adelie penguins have recently been exposed to trace levels of the chemical DDT as a result of frozen stores of the pesticide seeping out of the continent's melting glaciers.The chemical's presence could indicate that other frozen toxins will be released as a result of climate change in the environment, according to Heidi Geisz, a marine biologist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Geisz, who has worked in Antarctica since 1999, led the team...
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwanese and mainland Chinese conservationists are joining hands to save an endangered sea bird from extinction by urging fishermen to stop collecting and eating the birds' eggs, a Taiwanese birdwatcher said Monday.The Chinese crested tern - white with a black-and-white crest - migrates to eastern Chinese coasts between May and September, Taiwanese conservationists say. It's thought the birds fly there to escape the heat in South Asia, although they have not been seen...
By ROBERT F. BUKATY EASTERN EGG ROCK, Maine - It doesn't seem to matter to one puffin waddling over to join another of the birds that his chosen companion is a one-legged, wooden decoy. Puffins love company. The deception is one of the techniques that Stephen Kress has used to lure the colorful birds back to this rocky island. "I used an old hunter's trick, something that hadn't been done with seabirds before," Kress, director of the National Audubon's Seabird Restoration Program,...
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Hundreds of dead seabirds that washed up along the Southeast coast in recent weeks apparently starved to death, but experts don't know why.The deaths of the birds - similar to gulls and called greater shearwaters - have wildlife officials worried about possible changes in the ocean that could have affected the fish that the birds usually eat."It's got a lot of folks talking and wondering," said Jennifer Koches, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife...
By Anton Ferreira LAMBERTS BAY, South Africa (Reuters) - When a gang of seabird-killing seals ate the main tourist draw of Lamberts Bay, residents of the small South African town called in a surfer, an artist and a flock of fake gannets to save the day. Cape gannets had been breeding on a tiny island off Lamberts Bay, on the Atlantic coast 250 km (160 miles) north of Cape Town, since the early 1900s, becoming a profitable -- albeit raucous and smelly -- part of the landscape....
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Four pelicans suspected of being drunk on sea algae were being tested at a Southern California wildlife center on Saturday after one of them crashed headlong into a car. Three of the California brown pelicans were found wandering dazed in the streets of Laguna Beach after another pelican struck a vehicle's windshield on a nearby coast road. It suffered internal injuries and a long gash in its pouch and was undergoing toxicology tests. Officials at the Wildlife...
CORDELIA, Calif. -- Miles from the shoreline, 10 baby brown pelicans lounge by a pool in a roomy cage, large buckets of fish there for the taking. Just days ago, these birds could not feed themselves at all. Scores of starving baby pelicans - emaciated, cold and too weak to fly - are washing up on California beaches in disturbing numbers this spring.The underfed California brown pelicans have stirred concerns over the endangered species, which in recent years has shown strong signs of...
Latest Seabird Reference Libraries
The Great Frigate bird (fregata minor) is a big dispersive seabird in the frigatebird family. Their major nesting populations are found in the Pacific, including the Galapagos Islands and the Indian Oceans, plus a population in the South Atlantic. This bird is a lightly built large seabird up to 105 cm in length with feathers that are mostly black. This species shows sexual dimorphism; the female bird is bigger than the adult male with a white throat and breast, and the male’s scapular...
The Great Shearwater (puffinus gravis) is a large shearwater in a seabird family called Procellariidae. There is unclear evidence of its relationships. The Great Shearwater belongs to a group consisting of large species that can be distinguished as genus Ardenna; within these, it might be associated with the other blunt-tailed black-billed species Short-tailed Shearwater and particularly the Sooty Shearwater. On the other hand, it could be a monotypic subgenus (ardenna sensu stricto), a...
A large member of the loon, or diver, family of birds, this species is well-known as the Common Loon in North America and the Great Northern Diver in Eurasia; its current name is a compromise proposed by the International Ornithological Committee. There are 5 loon species that make up the genus Gavia, the only genus of the family Gavidae and order Gaviiformes. The Great Northern Loon is only one of those 5 species. The Yellow Billed Loon or the While Billed Diver is a large black headed...
Brandt's Cormorant (Phalacrocorax penicillatus), is a species of marine bird of the cormorant family of seabirds. It inhabits the Pacific coast of North America. Its summer range extends from Alaska to the Gulf of California. The populations north of Vancouver Island migrate south during the winter. The bird’s specific name, penicillatus, is Latin for ‘pencil of hairs,’ in reference to the white plumes on its neck and back during the early breeding season. The common name honors...
The South Polar Skua (Stercorarius maccormicki), is a species of seabird that is found on the Antarctic coasts. It is migratory and winters at sea in the Pacific Indian and Atlantic Oceans. In the eastern North Atlantic Ocean it is replaced by the Great Skua. It was formerly known as the MacCormick's Skua as its binomial was named after the naval surgeon Robert McCormick, who collected the type specimen. This is a large Skua which is nearly 21 inches long. It has a massive barrel chest...
