After Century's Absence, Seabirds' Return Surprises Scientists

After Century's Absence, Seabirds' Return Surprises Scientists

Earlier this year, supervision scientists detected a acquire gold of joy: a nest of seabird chicks on a Channel Islands off California's coast. This is a initial time baby birds of this class have been seen here given 1912.

Researchers from a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and a National Park Service (NPS) detected a California Common Murre (Uria aalge californica) chicks final July. The football-size seabirds are members of a auk family (Alcidae) and resemble black-and-white . Like penguins, murres use their wings , though distinct penguins, they also fly in a air.

Historically, murres nested on Prince Island, a tiny islet off San Miguel Island within Channel Islands National Park. This cluster left scarcely a century ago, expected as a outcome of tellurian reeling and egg harvesting.

In California, Common Murres are many abounding off executive by northern California, with tens to hundreds of thousands of birds nesting during a Farallon Islands, off Trinidad Head, and during Castle Rock National Wildlife Refuge. Smaller colonies are found over south, on nearshore islets along a Big Sur seashore and, now, once again on Prince Island.

"This is an sparkling anticipating â€" positively a ancestral one," pronounced Josh Adams, a seabird ecologist with a USGS Western Ecological Research Center. "The murres seem to have reestablished their former southern range, maybe benefitting from benefaction sea conditions."

"Conditions in a Santa Barbara Channel have been unusually prolific during a past decade," Adams pronounced in a statement. "Although many factors impact race redistribution and recovery, no doubt a murres during Prince Island are benefiting from comparatively cold summer waters, increasing sea productivity, and changes in forage-fish availability."

The new cluster is perched on 100-foot-high (30 meters) sea cliffs and was speckled by Adams, USGS biologist Jonathan Felis, and their Channel Islands National Park colleagues Laurie Harvey and David Mazurkeiwicz during investigate trips to this remote windswept island.

With this murre colony, Prince Island now hosts 13 nesting seabird species, creation it one of a many critical and biologically different nesting habitats on a West Coast of North America, according to a USGS statement.

This story was supposing by , a sister site to LiveScience.

News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/centurys-absence-seabirds-return-surprises-scientists-224603665.html