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The plumage of seabirds is thought in many cases to be for camouflage, both defensive (the colour of US Navy battleships is the same as that of Antarctic prions, [20] and in both cases it reduces visibility at sea) and aggressive (the white underside possessed by many seabirds helps hide them from prey below). The usually black wing tips help ...
Many seabirds remain at sea for several consecutive years at a time, without ever seeing land. Breeding is the central purpose for seabirds to visit land. The breeding period (courtship, copulation, and chick-rearing) is usually extremely protracted in many seabirds and may last over a year in some of the larger albatrosses ; [ 1 ] [ 2 ] this ...
In most seabird colonies several different species will nest on the same colony, often exhibiting some niche separation. Seabirds can nest in trees (if any are available), on the ground (with or without nests), on cliffs, in burrows under the ground and in rocky crevices. Colony size is a major aspect of the social environment of colonial birds.
Their nest is a scrape on a grassy ledge or a saucer of vegetation on the ground, lined with softer material. The birds nest in large colonies [3] [7] [18] [21] [22] Recently, they have started nesting on rooftops and buildings. [3] Both sexes are involved in the nest-building process. [7]
The nest of the Peruvian booby is made of almost pure guano. Human-made Guano Island near Walvis Bay in Namibia. Guano (Spanish from Quechua: wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. Guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth.
Booby chicks do not show clear differences in size based on sex, but females do grow faster than males, which means they require greater parental investment. Blue-footed boobies display behavior that is described in the flexible investment hypothesis, which states that a female adjusts the allocation of resources to maximize her lifetime ...
Where it nests on the tundra in the far north, the Arctic skua (Stercorarius parasiticus) is a terrestrial predator, but at lower latitudes, it is a specialised kleptoparasite, concentrating on auks and other seabirds. It harasses puffins while they are airborne, forcing them to drop their catch, which it then snatches up.
They nest in burrows and often give eerie contact calls on their night-time visits. They lay a single white egg. They lay a single white egg. The chicks of some species, notably short-tailed and sooty shearwaters, are subject to harvesting from their nest burrows for food, a practice known as muttonbirding , in Australia and New Zealand.