The tip travelling life of a Atlantic puffin

Using sunrises and sunsets, researchers might finally have a improved design of where Atlantic puffins spend many of their lives. 

The brightly billed birds are mostly complicated in their summer tact season, but where they go for a rest of a year has been a mystery.

It now appears that many Bay of Fundy puffins don’t try all that far.

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“The non-breeding season is two-thirds or three-quarters of a life of a puffin and we had no idea what went on in those years,” pronounced Tony Diamond, an ornithologist at the University of New Brunswick, and one of the authors of a investigate paper exploring a issue.

“Until a record came along that we could lane them.” 

Tony Diamond, an ornithologist researcher with a University of New Brunswick, releases a puffin as partial of his investigate on Machias Seal Island in a Bay of Fundy. ( Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research/UNB)

That technology came in a form of little light sensors that were banded to a legs of 270 puffins from 25 different populations opposite a North Atlantic. The investigate enclosed puffins from Canada, Norway, Ireland, Iceland, a United Kingdom and a U.S. 

Every integrate of minutes, a sensors record a volume of illumination a puffins experience. Once a information is collected, the scientists are able to use it to map out where any bird has been in a world, formed on the length of a day. 

Closer to home 

It turns out that puffins in a Bay of Fundy transport shorter distances during a winter months compared to their European counterparts. It’s a robe that appears to offer them well.

“They go to a integrate of startling places,” Diamond said. “One is they go to a St. Lawrence Estuary and a Gulf of St. Lawrence.”  

Less energy put into travelling translates to better breeding, according to Diamond. He said it appears the birds that transport a least have incomparable tact success in comparison to a incomparable European puffin populations.

Machias Seal Island is a critical tact belligerent for Atlantic puffins on this side of a Atlantic. The birds have been complicated on a tiny island for decades. ( Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research/UNB)

“Most of a birds spend many of their time in a Gulf of Maine,” Diamond said. “But afterwards we get these excursions to other places. We have dual birds that indeed go adult to southern Labrador immediately after breeding.” 

Some birds trafficked over 1,700 kilometres divided from their tact grounds, while 152 usually ventured a few hundred kilometres from their colony.

The investigate is published in a online book of the scientific journal Current Biology and includes researchers from both sides of a Atlantic.

It turns out there are noted differences in migration among colonies.

The formula uncover some puffins from European populations have crossed a Atlantic, though many stay in a open sea divided from land.

Protecting a puffin

The Atlantic puffin is deliberate a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It could turn involved if ecological conditions do not improve. 

Researchers are anticipating a information collected from a emigration investigate will be assistance establish where protected areas should be determined to assistance disappearing populations rebound.

The Atlantic puffin, graphic here on Machias Seal Island, is deliberate a exposed class by a International Union for Conservation of Nature. (Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research/UNB)

“We now have maps of a winter distribution of birds from via a tact operation of puffins,” pronounced Diamond.

“We can see a areas that they use, those from any colony, and we can see areas where they overlap. Those are kind of a hotspots of winter placement for puffins.” 

Bermuda-bound?

But as profitable as a information is for destiny of a iconic bird, a transport destinations of a few puffins sojourn baffling. 

“A lot of them will go out to a corner of a continental shelf and then keep going south,” pronounced Diamond. “So, we’ve got a cluster of birds that in April, that is only before a tact season, they’re spending time around a embodiment of Bermuda, out in a open ocean.” 

“In H2O that is warmer, way, approach warmer that they are in when they are breeding. So that was a large surprise.” 

Diamond pronounced he had no answers as to why birds that flower in cold-water temperatures would spend time so distant outward their approaching range. 

“I don’t know,” pronounced Diamond. “And we need to endorse it.” 

Tags used on puffins don’t magnitude temperature, he said, though a somewhat bigger tags used on razorbills do.

“So our subsequent collection of tagging is going to be with tags that record heat to confirm that during that time they unequivocally are in H2O that warm.” 

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/puffin-research-study-migration-1.4426607?cmp=rss