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Seabird mortality caused by long-line fisheries can be greatly reduced by techniques such as setting long-line bait at night, dying the bait blue, setting the bait underwater, increasing the amount of weight on lines and by using bird scarers, [104] and their deployment is increasingly required by many national fishing fleets.
Fowlsheugh Nature Reserve, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Fowlsheugh is a coastal nature reserve in Kincardineshire, northeast Scotland, known for its 70-metre-high (230 ft) cliff formations and habitat supporting prolific seabird nesting colonies.
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.
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.
The colony is at its most active in the evening, with birds standing outside their burrows, resting on the turf, or strolling around. Then, the slopes empty for the night as the birds fly out to sea to roost, often choosing to do so at fishing grounds ready for early-morning provisioning. [16]: 44–65
Adult near Burrow on Bruny Island. The photograph was taken at night. Fledgling, Austins Ferry, Tasmania, Australia. The short-tailed shearwater or slender-billed shearwater (Ardenna tenuirostris; formerly Puffinus tenuirostris), also called yolla or moonbird, and commonly known as the muttonbird in Australia, is the most abundant seabird species in Australian waters, and is one of the few ...
They nest on open ground or among rocks or less often in a burrow where one white egg is laid. The burrow is visited at night to minimise predation from large gulls. In late summer and autumn, most birds migrate into the Atlantic as far north as the south-western coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. They return to the Mediterranean in February.
Many types of seabirds are vulnerable to injury and death as a result of being attracted to artificial lights at night. This is a particular threat for petrels and shearwaters. [ 27 ] Burrow-nesting seabirds like the Westland petrel returning to their burrows at night, or leaving them before dawn, can become disoriented by artificial lights and ...