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Central place foraging by breeding Cook’s petrel Pterodroma cookii: foraging duration reflects range, diet and chick meal mass

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Abstract

Pelagic seabirds are central place foragers during breeding and variation in foraging trip duration and range reflect differences in diet and chick provisioning, through the exploitation of divergent habitats of varying productivity. We tested whether these relationships hold in small procellarriids by equipping chick-rearing Cook’s petrel Pterodroma cookii (200 g) with geolocation-immersion loggers, conducting isotope analysis of blood and measuring chick meal mass following foraging trips of varying duration. Cook’s petrel tracked during chick rearing from Little Barrier Island (LBI) and Codfish Island (CDF), New Zealand had larger maximum ranges during longer foraging trips. Blood nitrogen isotope signatures (δ15N) of adults were significantly higher after foraging trips of longer duration, but not of greater maximum range. There was no significant relationship between blood carbon isotope signatures (δ13C) and foraging trip characteristics. Proportion of time spent on the sea surface and the mass of the meal brought back to chicks were consistently greater for Cook’s petrel with larger maximum ranges, which in the case of birds from CDF coincided with productive subtropical convergence zone habitats. As predicted, trip duration reflected divergent foraging behaviours in Cook’s petrel during breeding. We suggest that the availability of different prey is a key factor governing at-sea distributions and dietary composition of this species.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Paul Sagar, David Thompson and Leigh Torres for providing useful comments on drafts of this manuscript, Sarah Bury (NIWA Wellington) for conducting stable isotope analyses, Todd Dennis for advice on spatial analyses and Wendy Rayner for support during this research. We are grateful to the two referees whose insightful comments greatly improved an initial draft of the manuscript. MJR was supported by a New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship and a Foundation for Research Science and Technology Post Doctoral Fellowship during the completion of this research. This work was conducted with ethics approval from the University of Auckland Animal Ethics Committee and research permission from the New Zealand Department of Conservation (AK-14677 and SOUCO-61074 040558). This research represents a contribution to the BAS Ecosystems Programme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd, Private Bag 99940, Auckland, New Zealand

    M. J. Rayner & B. W. Hartill

  2. Department of Psychology, Hunter College of the City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10065, USA

    M. E. Hauber

  3. British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, UK

    R. A. Phillips

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  1. M. J. Rayner
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  2. B. W. Hartill
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Correspondence to M. J. Rayner.

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Communicated by R. Lewison.

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Rayner, M.J., Hartill, B.W., Hauber, M.E. et al. Central place foraging by breeding Cook’s petrel Pterodroma cookii: foraging duration reflects range, diet and chick meal mass. Mar Biol 157, 2187–2194 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-010-1483-8

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