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There cannot be many ABA area breeding birds harder to get than those that only breed on the remotest tips of the north of North America and then fly off to places that aren’t on the major continental flyways. You can encounter them from Hawaii across to French Polynesia and Fiji.
I got rather carried away showing all the plumages you can see around a breeding colony, which means I had to split my post on the species into two. Here I’ll finish off what I started, looking at the lives of these amazing birds, using the pictures I took working on Tern Island in French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii.
The survival of songbirds depends in part upon eliminating illegal hunting. That means passing over the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East, where you’re liable to get shot, trapped, or otherwise hunted. Take Hawaii, for example. The population of Millerbirds on Laysan has doubled , and breeding seems to be going well.
This particular example of flexibility comes from Tern Island, in French Frigate Shoals to the north of Hawaii. Towards the end of their breeding season the islands become a somewhat melancholy place as the visits by adults dwindle and then stop, and the youngsters fledge off into the vast expanse of ocean around the island.
European Red Foxes were brought into Australia in the 1850′s for recreational hunting and soon spread rapidly. We have seen them on remote beaches hunting shorebirds and taking their eggs and they have been responsible for much of the egg loss in breeding Pied Oystercatchers along the Broome coast.
In Hawaii, they are found as high as 11,000 feet ! Partners in Flight estimates that the global breeding population is around 50 million; 30% of which can be found in North America and Canada. While hunting plays some role, habitat loss as farms switch to monocultures is the greater culprit.
Christmas Shearwater ( Puffinus nativitatis ) on Tern Island, French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii. The Christmas Shearwater is a smallish, dark chocolate brown shearwater that lives and breeds in remote areas of the tropical eastern Pacific. They mostly feed on squid, which they hunt by diving.
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