On a wing and a player: hopes webcam can save endangered albatross

Footage of tiny colony of birds on the southern tip of New Zealand captivates millions around the globe

Eleanor Ainge Royin Dunedin

Sat 12 Jan 2019 01.00 GMTLast modified on Mon 14 Jan 2019 03.25 GMT

Millions of amateur naturalists around the world have been tuning in to the secret lives of albatrosses as New Zealand rangers employ YouTube in a bid to save the mysterious giant sea birds.

New Zealand conservation teams set up a 24-hour live-stream of an albatross nest at Taiaroa Head on the Otago peninsula in 2016. Three years on, the feed has become an unexpected global hit, with 2.3 million people from 190 countries tuning in to watch the endangered birds rear their chicks on a frigid peninsula at the bottom of the world.

 “Someone somewhere in the world is watching 24 hours a day,” says department of conservation (DoC) ranger Jim Watts.

“People watch it in hospitals, in nursing homes. There’s a real intimacy to watching the chicks grow – people fall in love and become invested.”

The northern royal albatross – or toroa in the Maori language te reo – is endemic to New Zealand and is under threat from climate change, fly-strike disease and heat stress. The birds have been described as “casualties on the frontline” of the war against plastic, as they mainly feed by swooping down on squid in the ocean – and often mistake brightly coloured plastic for prey.

The estimated total population of northern royal albatross is 17,000, and with intensive intervention the Taiaroa Head population has doubled since 1990. But that protected colony represents only 1% of the total population, and their small New Zealand home has become “crucial” to conservation efforts as they are the only managed and quantifiable settlement of the rare and endangered birds in the world.

The other 99% of toroa live on remote sub-antarctic Chatham Islands and have never been accurately counted or managed, though survey drone flights are planned in the near future.

Watts says the 24/7 coverage from the camera has provided valuable insights into the lives of the elusive birds, and has the capacity to ensure more vulnerable chicks reach adulthood.

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Birds migrate away from diseases

Date:  April 10, 2018

Source:  Lund University

In a unique study, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have mapped the origins of migratory birds. They used the results to investigate and discover major differences in the immune systems of sedentary and migratory birds. The researchers conclude that migratory species benefit from leaving tropical areas when it is time to raise their young -- as moving away from diseases in the tropics enables them to survive with a less costly immune system.

Analysing the genealogy of over 1300 song bird species, passerines, enabled the researchers to establish that both sedentary birds, which do not leave northern Europe in the winter, and migratory birds, which breed in Europe but spend the winter close to the equator, originate from Africa.

The researchers then went on to study the immune system in three different groups: sedentary birds in tropical Africa, European sedentary birds, and migratory birds. Their findings show that African sedentary birds have a more varied and extensive immune system than that of both European sedentary birds and migratory birds.

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Human handouts could be spreading disease from birds to people

 Date: November 11, 2015

Source: University of Georgia

People feeding white ibises at public parks are turning the normally independent birds into beggars, and now researchers at the University of Georgia say it might also be helping spread disease.

They recently launched a study to find out how being fed by humans is changing the health, ecology and behavior of white ibises in south Florida, where construction and land development is drying up their wetland habitats.

The birds normally feed on aquatic animals like fish, snails and crayfish, but they are now becoming accustomed to being fed items such as bread, fast food and popcorn by people at parks, said Sonia Hernandez, an associate professor with joint appointments in UGA's Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources and College of Veterinary Medicine.

This shift in feeding behavior could have serious consequences not just for the white ibises, she said, but also to people.

"In a previous study, and using molecular typing methods, we found that the strains of salmonella bacteria that white ibises are infected with are the same that some people get sick from, particularly in Florida," Hernandez said. "Because white ibises move from urban to natural environments readily, they might be responsible for moving these strains around over large distances."

Hernandez is working with other UGA researchers on the five-year, $2.1 million project, funded by the National Science Foundation's Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Program. Their findings could apply to other wildlife species that have grown cozy with humans at public parks and other human-altered landscapes, she said.

Other researchers on the project are Jeff Hepinstall-Cymerman, an associate professor in the Warnell School; Sonia Altizer, a professor, and Richard Hall, an assistant research scientist, both in the Odum School of Ecology; and Kristen Navara, an associate professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

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Birds that eat at feeders are more likely to get sick, spread disease

Date: September 16, 2015

Source: Virginia Tech

Summary: The authors monitored the social and foraging behaviors of wild flocks of house finches, a common backyard songbird, and the spread of a naturally-occurring bird disease called Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis, which is similar to "pink eye" in humans but cannot be contracted by humans.

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Warming impacting bird populations in Hawai'i

Published July 20, 2015 07:07 AM

October 12, 2007 07:31 PM

Hawai‘i, the name alone elicits images of rhythmic traditional dancing, breathtaking azure sea coasts and scenes of vibrant birds flitting through lush jungle canopy. Unfortunately, the future of many native Hawaiian birds looks grim as diseases carried by mosquitoes are due to expand into higher elevation safe zones.

A new study published in Global Change Biology, by researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, assesses how global climate change will affect future malaria risk to native Hawaiian bird populations in the coming century.

Mosquito-carried diseases such as avian pox and avian malaria have been devastating native Hawaiian forest birds. A single mosquito bite can transfer malaria parasites to a susceptible bird, where the death rate may exceed 90 percent for some species. As a result, many already threatened or endangered native birds now only survive in disease-free refuges found in high-elevation forests where mosquito populations and malaria development are limited by colder temperatures. Unlike continental bird species, island birds cannot move northward in response to climate change or increased disease stressors, but must adapt or move to less hospitable habitats to survive.

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Rare baby orange bellied parrots face extinction after beak and feather disease outbreak

Felicity Ogilvie reported this story on Monday, June 1, 2015 12:55:00

ELEANOR HALL: A deadly disease is infecting the nestling population of one of the world's most critically endangered birds - the orange-bellied parrot. 

The parrots spend their winters in Victoria and South Australia before flying to Tasmania's remote south-west wilderness to breed. Now, in a terrible blow for the future of the species, 19 of the estimated 30 birds that were born there last summer tested positive to beak and feather disease. 

As Felicity Ogilvie reports from Hobart.

(sounds of parrots squawking)

FELICITY OGILVIE: The brightly coloured and sweet sounding orange-bellied parrot is so rare that scientists believe there are less than 60 adult birds left in the wild. The birds spend their summers rearing their young at Melaleuca in Tasmania's remote South West Wilderness. But last summer, it's believed 14 of the baby birds have been killed by the contagious beak and feather disease. 

Samantha Vine is the head of conservation at Birdlife Australia, a not for profit group that seeks to protect native birds.

SAMANTHA VINE: It affects their - as the name suggests - beaks and feathers. So they grow abnormally. It is actually highly lethal to young birds, so obviously with around 30 new birds being added to the population this year, if there is such a high rate of mortality, we'd be very concerned that that cohort of babies will not make it.

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Disease kills hundreds of seabirds in Alaska

Saturday December 7, 2013 7:00 PM

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A disease has killed hundreds of seabirds on an island in the Bering Sea — the first documented outbreak in the state.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game says avian cholera is to blame for the birds found dead on the beaches of St. Lawrence Island, 200 miles from the mainland. The Anchorage Daily News reports (http://is.gd/yXJOYK ) that while the disease is common elsewhere, including in California, Nevada and Texas, this is the first confirmed outbreak in Alaska.

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