Sooty shearwaters given a hand to get going
Spare a thought for the young sooty shearwater.
At a time when they are just ready to fly, their parents have already left them to their own devices.
Graeme Loh has been helping to protect a colony near Sandfly Bay in Dunedin and recently picked up one vulnerable young member of the colony after an accident in Port Chalmers.
The bird was taken to the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital, where it was nursed back to health and made ready for its venture towards the seas, Mr Loh said.
"The parents have already left on the migration to the North Pacific, and that's what the chicks have got to do, but some of them get it wrong, and they get blown into town, or they get distracted by artificial lighting and crash in town.
"This one ended up in hospital."
Mr Loh said the bird was tagged and ready to be released and had put on enough weight — about 700g — to sustain itself.
The bird's parents would have set off in mid-April, Mr Loh said.
"The chicks just sit in their burrows, because they're burrow-nesting birds and slowly turn their fat into feathers.
"When they're around about 600g they come out for a few nights and flap their wings and look at the stars to get their orientation correct, and then usually after about four nights, they'll fly away."
Sooty shearwater and the Royal New Zealand Albatross are once again under the spotlight in Dunedin this week.
This year, the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) meeting is taking place in Dunedin until Friday.
It is held every three years and is hosted by different countries which are party to the agreement.
Graeme Loh prepares to release a sooty shearwater, rescued after a recent crash landing in Port Chalmers. PHOTO: STEPHEN JAQUIERY
Mr Loh said on the mainland sooty shearwater were particularly vulnerable to rats, cats and dogs.
As a result, serious trapping and fencing efforts had been implemented near the colonies on the mainland, in line with the country's aspirations to be predator-free.
"Otago has got one of the biggest mainland colonies of this bird in the country.
"We've got over a hundred pairs of active burrows. This year we banded just short of 70 chicks. The year before last, we banded well over 100."
When the chicks finally left, they could be vulnerable in international waters due to getting caught in fishery by-catch or trawlers, he said.
"Our investment of effort here with our our predator control — it all goes to nothing if they die in the open ocean fisheries," Mr Loh said.
"We need the co-operation of all the Pacific countries, particularly the big fishing countries, in avoiding fisheries by-catch."
Breeding seasons were very dependent on climate cycles, he said.
"When there's El Nino on, the birds don't do very well.
"Not so many of them breed. A lot of the chicks don't get up to heavy weight, and quite a few chicks die of starvation.
"But in La Nina years, which we had four years ago, they do really well — some of the chicks get over double their adult weight from all the food they're getting."
matthew.littlewood@odt.co.nz
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