Redzama oliņa.


13.00
Jau visu nakti un arī dienā ir ļoti stiprs vējš, albatross nedaudz izkustas, bet pārsvarā guļ.

13.02

(GT)Sharyn Broni (Ranger, DOC) Mod
Featured by Department of Conservation
Kia ora koutou (hello everyone)
The Royalcam nest.
After RLK arrived back at Signal Station Trig nest for his turn at incubating the egg on the 17th of December it was decided to GPS tag him first.
Geo Positioning Tags are very light weight and are cable tied to the strong back feathers between the wings. They will fall off after around a year when these feathers are moulted. We will receive the data via satellite so do not need to retrieve the device to see the information that it has gathered of the bird’s whereabouts. We hope to gain foraging location insights from the data.
The egg was placed in the incubator prior to tagging and returned once he was settled on a dummy egg on the nest. Dummy eggs are kept warm in the incubator until use, so it is near the bird’s body temperature when placed in the nest. Toroa are very accepting of eggs that are fake or not their own making dummy eggs great tools for conservation management.
RLK needed some band maintenance, so this was done while being handled for deployment of the tracker. The lime band was split so all the colour bands were removed and replaced with an alphanumeric band KA85.
GLG with be tagged once she returns to the nest. Their egg is now 41 days old, so they are mid-way through the incubation period.
Today's GPS tag update of RLK/KA85 and 10 juvenile toroa and from Pukekura tagged 25th of September and 5th of October 2024.
View — uploads.disquscdn.com
The juveniles fledged between the 27th of September to the 14th of October 2024. They will not make landfall until they return to Pukekura in 4 to 10 years’ time. Although recently two 3 year olds have returned to Pukekura.
The Top of Bluff Track orphans tag had been functioning well, but we have had no further updates from this tag since early December. An analysis of the tag track data will be carried out to determine likely causes of tag failure. It is possible that he has not survived. The 9 other tags all off the coast of South America continue to function well. The distance across Te Moana-nui-a-kiwa | Pacific Ocean, is over 9000 km.
The return rate of adolescents at 5 years of age (approximately) is up to 30% of the number fledged in any given year.
In other news, Amīria, the Royalcam chick from 2018, has returned to Pukekura and has been banded YA43.
Read more about past Royalcam families here: https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-a ... osses/roya