Albatross Colonie -- Taiaroa Head

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This was a great windy day, perfect for Albatrosses to fly, so I decided to go out there to check out these amazing birds. It was so windy, that my car was shaking like crazy. I had difficulties walking to the building... But the birds seemed to love it, you could see them shoot through the air, I never thought that I would be ever amazed by a bird like this...

Quick facts for all those who don't want to read this huge pile of information ;-)

September: Birds arrive
Beginning of November: birds begin to build the nest
First 3 weeks of November: laying of the egg

Egg: up to 500 g

Incubationtime: 11 weeks, parents take turns every 2 to 8 days
Breeding parent sleeps, the other one is on the sea

End of January/Beginning of February: after chick hatched (takes up to 3 days to get out of the shell) the parents take turn feeding it and sitting on it to keep it warm (30-40days)

Chick weighs 300 g after it hatched, it gains weight very very fast, so after a while it looks pretty funny when the parent still wants to sit on it to keep it warm but the chick is already too big...

Meals: Chick has to beg for food, after 100 days the chick eats up to 2 kg per meal!
to survive the winter the chick weighs 12-13kg, twice as much as parents, and can't even walk anymore.
August: Parents put it on a "diet" to get weight down (feeding reduced to 3-4meals a day).
September: Chick leaves nest to practice flying (spreads out wings and "plays" with the wind)
One day chick will get some good wind and off it goes to spend the next 3 to 6 years on sea, not touching ground once. When they come back to their colony after a couple of years they can't even walk anymore because teh muscles are not trained anymore.

70% come back to their birthplace, a lot of them build their nest within meters of their own birthplace.

After time on sea they look for a partner (1-2years)

After finding a partner (mostly for life) they breed every 2 years.

When traveling the oceans they fly 500 to 1000 km a day!!!

They can lock 2 of their 3 joints in their wings, flying with the wind doesn't take a whole lot of energy (less then walking).

They have a desalting plant build into their head, this is why they can live for years on the open sea.



These are a couple of interesting facts about these amazing birds, the following part is very interesting to read, I recommend doing so:

Albatross

For most people, the chances of seeing a royal albatross is slimmer than finding a needle in a haystack. With only 7,700 pairs of the northern subspecies (Diomedea epomophora sanfordi) in the world, most nesting on the remote Chatham Islands, hundreds of kilometers east of New Zealand, the birds live far off the beaten path. Even more remote is a southern subspecies (Diomedea epomophora epomophora) of about 7,800 pairs, which cruise Antarctic oceans.

From a photograph, an observer might easily mistake a northern royal for a common species of seagull(Seemöve). But get within 50 meters of one of these birds gliding overhead, and it's plain to see the royal albatross is something special. Arguably the biggest flying bird in the world, this albatross often has a wingspan of around 3 meters and, by the time it fledges, usually weighs more than 7 kg. It is among the longest-living birds, surviving up to 60 years, a remarkable feat considering it spends 80 percent of its life fully exposed on the frigid, often stormy, open oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. For years at a time the bird eschews land, sleeping on the ocean's surface at night and hunting by day.

The royal is a long-range glider, capable of sustaining speeds of 100 km per hour for days as it crisscrosses the ocean. For centuries mariners have marveled at how albatrosses can ride out stormy weather. On extremely long, narrow, knife-shaped wings, they can stay aloft for hours without flapping as they effortlessly trail a vessel that is being tossed about by a storm. Scientists estimate northern royals travel up to 120,000 miles annually across the Southern Pacific in search of their favorite foods, squid and cuttlefish.

Yet unbelievable grace on the wing doesn't necessarily translate to grace on land. Witnessing the clumsiness of a royal albatross as it lands in a nesting colony can be excruciating, especially if the wind drops and the inbound bird can't use its wings to brake properly. It's not uncommon for a landing to go awry and for one bird to careen into others and do a few somersaults before coming to a stop. It is quite funny to see the sharp contrast of this mighty bird shooting through the air, and then landing and suddenly looking like a clown...

Royals need the wind to take flight, facing into it on land or, after running along the ocean's surface, stepping aloft off a swell. Luckily, the southern oceans are usually windswept. But when the wind abates, an albatross resting on the surface must bide its time, waiting for the next breeze before taking to the air again.

Listed as endangered in 1997 by the IUCN--World Conservation Union, the species' survival challenges come mainly from nature but also from people. Like the world's 23 other species of albatross, northern royals are under greater pressure than ever from fishing fleets. For the royals, the most damage comes from over-fishing, which has depleted their food supplies. Species that hunt farther out to sea also face significant danger from longlines. The lines, frequently baited with squid, pose a deadly attraction to the birds, which become hooked. The magnificent wandering and sooty albatrosses have been particularly hard hit.

Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean fleets operating in open waters ignore concerns expressed by other nations. On the positive side, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Chile, France, New Zealand, and Peru signed the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels in June of this year. New longline fishing innovations and technologies required by the agreement are already proving beneficial to albatrosses. A device that releases the baited line far below the surface, for instance, keeps it out of reach of the surface-eating albatrosses. These methods to keep the animals away from fishing lines are very simple and not expensive at all. It is surprising, that not more fishermen use them since a bird on their long line means less fish, tangled up lines... Within their territorial waters, New Zealand and Australia also enforce conservation measures, such as restricting the setting of longlines to the night hours, when albatrosses are less active.

At least one factor works in the royal albatross's favor. Because northern royals stay closer to the continental shelf than other albatross species, they hunt in government-regulated waters. "It's the albatrosses that hunt outside the protected shelf areas that are especially vulnerable," says Chris Roberston, perhaps New Zealand's top albatross expert.

The struggles of the northern royal albatross might well have gone unnoticed if not for the vantage point provided by Dunedin. At Taiaroa Head, on the tip of the Otago Peninsula, a colony of royals has been nurtured by the townspeople since the 1930s. This unique mainland breeding colony has a remarkable chick survival rate and serves as the only place where a person can see and appreciate the majesty and life cycle of royals. Albatross viewing, in fact, has become big business there. Last year Taiaroa Head celebrated the 144th fledging of a royal albatross since protection for the birds began in 1938. More than 35,000 visitors a year come to the specially designed viewing area to watch the huge birds perform elaborate courtship dances, build nests, brood, hatch, and raise their young.

The birds pair for life. One albatross, known as Grandma, was 62 years of age and still producing offspring before she went back to sea for the last time. If all goes right at the nest site, it takes eight months to fledge a chick. Raising young is so strenuous and time-consuming that royals nest only every second year, beginning between the ages of 8 and 10 years.

The Taiaroa colony has seen the dark side of human nature as well as the good. In 1920 the first recorded pair of albatrosses appeared and laid an egg. Someone stole the egg, it probably ended up in someones pan... This sad scenario persisted off and on for 15 years. A pair of albatrosses would appear. Someone would steal the rare 400g egg, or predators would kill the chick.

Then in 1936 a savior appeared on the scene in the form of Lance Rickdale, a local teacher and ornithologist. He discovered a pair of royals incubating an egg on a ledge at Taiaroa Head, but, sure enough, this egg was soon stolen. Two years later, the next breeding season, Rickdale camped near the nesting pair, driving off ferrets and keeping an eye out for human intruders. His efforts were successful. The chick flew out to sea on September 22, 1938. Rickdale's dedication became legendary.

When World War II came to New Zealand, the albatrosses were left to fend for themselves. In a progressive move for the times, the Otago Harbour Board, the New Zealand Wildlife Service, and the Dunedin Rotary joined forces to protect the birds. The Rotary donated money to help hire a ranger, who zealously trapped ferrets(Frettchen) and steadfastly made sure the albatrosses weren't disturbed. Even when Britain's queen mother visited Dunedin, she was only given a brief look at nesting birds.

In time, Taiaroa Head became a preserve and tour buses began pulling up. The Otago Peninsula Trust, working with the New Zealand Department of Conservation, developed a management plan. By the 1970s, 6 to 10 pairs arrived annually, along with young adults that came to strut their stuff before permanently pairing. Today as many as 35 birds are in residence at a time.

The conservation workers at Taiaroa Head go to extraordinary lengths to help the birds hatch as many eggs and fledge as many chicks as possible. Some years half of the chicks in the Taiaroa colony benefit from human intervention. Since 1938, 73 chicks have received some sort of assistance.

"We learned as we went along," says Sandra McGrouther, a 23-year veteran with the department. "Nothing stood in the way of doing all we could to see to it each nesting pair had success." Their first challenge was controlling predators: rats, cats, dogs, and two members of the weasel family. Stoats (fearless tiny weasels introduced from England) and ferrets (a larger weasel, also brought over from England) proved to be the toughest to control. Sadly, say the wildlife managers, lethal trapping is necessary.

"We lost four chicks to a rogue stoat in the early 1990s," recalls McGrouther. "The stoat actually killed a chick while the mother was sitting on it, which was very depressing for us. We began intensive trapping and have had a pretty good handle on the ferrets and stoats in recent years."

A European blowfly, yet another life-form introduced to New Zealand, proved to be as harmful as the weasels. This insect lays its eggs on the albatross's egg, and their larvae hatch and penetrate the eggshell. "We had chicks born infested with maggots," says McGrouther. "We'd take the chicks home with us and doctor them and were able to save most." If a fly infestation is particularly threatening, conservation workers snatch the egg from the nest, replace it with a fiberglass egg to keep the parents satisfied, and return the real egg (or chick) from an on-site incubator once the fly menace has run its course.

One of the most dramatic saves occurred when a parent accidentally cracked an egg long before it was due to hatch. The embryo would have surely perished if something wasn't done," recalls McCrouther. "The egg was taken, mended with Superglue, and incubated until the chick was hatched. The parents had been slipped a dummy fiberglass egg. When the chick was returned to its nest, the parents raised it without a hiccup."

Out at sea, royals face other threats besides fishing. Storms that battered the Chatham Islands in the early 1990s took a heavy toll on the species' prime nesting sites. "The tops of these islands were literally blown into the sea as a result of huge storms," says Robertson. "What used to be an ideal nesting area with shade and the cooling influences of ground cover has become an overheated wasteland with high rates of nesting failure." Because ground temperatures soar up to 128 degrees Fahrenheit, the birds can die on their nests.


The situation poses a sinister catch-22. More and more birds are losing chicks and returning to nest the following year instead of skipping a year. The result is overcrowding and additional stress. "The stress translates into thinner eggshells, causing more losses because of their fragility," explains Robertson.

The islands are so remote and the cliffs that surround them so precipitous that little can be done for the birds. The restoration of vegetation may take decades. And so the northern royal albatross faces a rough ride for the foreseeable future; just how rough is hard to say.

Walk on the Wild Side

A Visit to Taiaroa Head

Taiaroa Head on New Zealand's South Island is the only place an ecotourist can go for easy access to a colony of royal albatrosses. But that's not all the area has to offer. Ten other bird species breed there, including the rare Stewart Island shag. Southern fur seals can be spotted basking on headland beaches along with a wide array of seabirds. A side trip takes you to a colony of vocal yellow-eyed penguins, the rarest of penguins.

The albatrosses arrive in September and spend the next few months mating, then laying and incubating eggs. Chicks begin hatching in January, and the birds remain at the colony for about another eight months. Watching the chick take its first flight may be the most dramatic event in this cycle, although seeing the adults court is a close rival.


(http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FRO/is_1_135/ai_81790108)

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