Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Spending the autumn and winter in the open ocean of the cold northern seas, the Atlantic puffin returns to coastal areas at the start of the breeding season in late spring. It nests in clifftop colonies, digging a burrow in which a single white egg is laid. Chicks mostly feed on whole fish and grow rapidly.
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.
The concentration of birds during migration can put species at risk. Some spectacular migrants have already gone extinct; during the passenger pigeon's (Ectopistes migratorius) migration the enormous flocks were 1.5 kilometres (1 mi) wide, darkening the sky, and 500 km (300 mi) long, taking several days to pass. [134]
Common tern Conservation status Least Concern (IUCN 3.1) Scientific classification Domain: Eukaryota Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Charadriiformes Family: Laridae Genus: Sterna Species: S. hirundo Binomial name Sterna hirundo Linnaeus, 1758 Breeding Resident Non-breeding Passage Vagrant (seasonality uncertain) Synonyms Sterna fluviatilis (Naumann, 1839) Twisted head The ...
It is the largest seabird in the northern Atlantic. [2] [3] The sexes are similar in appearance. The adult northern gannet has a mainly white streamlined body with a long neck, and long and slender wings. It is 87–100 cm (34 + 1 ⁄ 2 – 39 + 1 ⁄ 2 in) long with a 170–180 cm (67–71 in) wingspan. The head and nape have a buff tinge that ...
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.
Outside the breeding season, skuas take fish, offal, and carrion. Many practice kleptoparasitism , which comprises up to 95% of the feeding methods of wintering skuas, by chasing gulls, terns and other seabirds to steal their catches, regardless of the size of the species attacked (up to three times heavier than the attacking skua).