Artificial nests to boost breeding of threatened shy albatross

“Bit of mud, bit of dirt, bit of vegetation, the bones of their previously dead chicks which they pack into a little pile…”

Bit of morbid practicality from the shy albatross when it comes to nest-building material!

The birds may use “anything they can get their beak on” but the bird scientists are a little more discriminating in what they use to craft artificial nests for the endemic Tasmanian birds, according to Dr Rachael Alderman, Seabird biologist with the Department of Primary Industries, Park, Water and Environment (DPIPWE).

They’re not using bones, then? “We didn’t go that far. Ideally the birds will augment some of the nests themselves over time, maybe they can choose to add that.”

“One of the things we’ve observed in all our years of monitoring (shy albatross) is that some birds make really good nests and some birds, for whatever reasons, make low-quality nests. If you have a low quality nest, you’re less likely to successfully raise a chick from an egg through to hatching, for a chick that survives at the end of the season. We’re coming in with some nests that we’re making back here that we think the albatross will quite like, and they’re all good quality ones, and we’re going to put them in spots where the albatross aren’t making good nests and we’re going to let them use them and ideally hopefully it will produce more chicks through these nests than would otherwise have been produced on the island.”

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Getting to know the shy albatross: A scientist's 13-year crusade to save a native Tasmanian sea bird

 By Sam Ikin

Updated yesterday at 10:23pm

Spreading awareness of Tasmania's vulnerable species of sea bird, the shy albatross, is the key to keeping the species alive, a prominent scientist says.

From climate change, plastic ingestion, habitat loss or feral animals it is not difficult to understand why the shy albatross is somewhat withdrawn.

The native Tasmanian sea bird is currently listed as vulnerable under the Threatened Species Protection Act which why a prominent scientist wants Tasmanians to get to know the shy albatross better.

Species need to have their champions.

Wildlife officer with the Tasmanian parks department, Rachael Alderman, has been studying the giant birds since 2003 and said the data she had collected was not encouraging.

"There's been a general decline in breeding success, for every pair that lay an egg it's getting increasingly less likely that they'll have a surviving chick at the end of the year," she said.

"We're also finding that if they are successful ... fewer and fewer chicks are surviving that first period at sea and making it back."

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