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An Introduction to Seabirds and Their Study
Published in Jaime A. Ramos, Leonel Pereira, Seabird Biodiversity and Human Activities, 2022
Marie Claire Gatt, José Pedro Granadeiro, Paulo Catry
However, some of the largest volant avian species are among seabirds, and therefore they must be capable of energy efficient flight at sea. The Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans) is a classical example, weighing up to 12 kg and with a wingspan of up to 3.5 metres—the largest in any extant bird, it maintains remarkably low mass-specific field metabolic rates during gliding flight, with heart rates during flight only ca 50% above those when resting (Weimerskirch et al. 2000). This is achieved through dynamic soaring, whereby albatrosses and other Procellariiforme seabirds gain energy from shear wind by cyclically climbing in headwinds, curving leewards, descending, and curving again into headwinds, sustaining long-distance non-flapping flight at very little energetic expense (Weimerskirch et al. 2000, Shaffer et al. 2001, Sachs et al. 2013). As an adaptation to this means of travel, albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters have long, narrow wings and a few species even possess a locking elbow joint which allows them to keep their wings open without muscular effort (Pennycuick 1982). Frigatebirds use a different flying technique, owing to their inability to take off from the water’s surface despite their dependence on the marine environment for foraging (Weimerskirch et al. 2016). They have the lowest wing loading of any bird (Pennycuick 1983) and travel by rollercoaster flight, soaring up thermals formed below cumulus clouds to altitudes generally up to 700 m, then gliding down, covering long distances at very little energetic cost, sometimes remaining on the wing for weeks on end (Weimerskirch et al. 2016). Many other seabirds flap-glide throughout powered flight, with the extent of flapping to gliding varying with their morphology (Pennycuick 1986).
Advances in bio-logging techniques and their application to study navigation in wild seabirds
Published in Advanced Robotics, 2019
How animals acquire such navigational ability is one of the most intriguing and important questions in navigation. When the breeding season is over, the adult streaked shearwaters migrate to the seas off New Guinea, northern Australia or the Philippines from November to March for wintering [87]. The birds that migrate from a colony on the north of the large topographic barrier of Honshu Island, Japan, make substantial detours to avoid any landmasses, because shearwaters use dynamic soaring to extract energy for highly efficient travel over oceans. In fact, migrating adults followed one of two paths that detoured around landmasses that hindered direct southerly migration [31].