Are you old enough? Ingenue diving petrels

[Colin Miskelly]

Some interesting discoveries from monitoring translocated petrel populations on Mana Island yesterday.

A female diving petrel that I banded as a chick last November was incubating an egg during the day (her mate is a 2-year-old). This is the third case since 2005 of a 1-year-old common diving petrel breeding on Mana island (1 male, 2 females). As I am monitoring only 10-12 pairs per annum, this suggests it is not the rare (or non-existent for Procellariiformes) phenomenon that the text books would have us believe.

One of the four fairy prions handled was translocated as a chick in January 2004, and had not been seen since. This is the first 'new' transferee detected on Mana Island since 2008 (fortunately just in time to squeeze into the summary manuscript). To reinforce how cryptic these birds can be, one of the other birds handled had not been seen since 2007, despite both the burrows they were in having been inspected dozens of times in the interim.

Regards to all
Colin