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Summary
This report details the findings of an analysis of images from a series of trail cameras put out to monitor fledgling survival and aspects of nesting phenology of Whitecapped Albatross (Thalassarche steadi) breeding above Castaways Bay on Disappointment Island (Auckland Island archipelago). The cameras were put out in mid-January 2018 (three sites and six cameras), mid-February 2022 (10 sites and cameras) and mid-February 2023 (the same 10 sites but with differing viewpoints). In all cases, the cameras were expected to run for up to a year but most failed before that, either outright from the start, or later through marked shifts in their fields of view, including falling over, or because of battery failure.
The proportion of chicks that fledged, as a percentage of the number observed initially from the post-hatch stage onwards was 25%–30% in the 2018 breeding season and 47%–53% in 2022, the variation depending on assumptions made about
the fate of late-stage chicks present when the cameras monitoring them failed. None of the cameras functioned for long enough to estimate survival for 2023. The maximum it could have been was 68%, based on the number of chicks still alive when the cameras began failing between early March and early June.
Fledging occurred over a 47-day period in 2018 (mean fledging date: 3/08/2018, N = 5) and a 39-day period in 2022 (mean fledging date: 30/07/2022, N = 21). Of those pairs that were successful in 2022, and which were seen back at the colony at the start of the 2023 season, 71%–78% did not renest that season.
The fledging period, from hatching to fledging, was reasonably accurately determined in one chick to be 166 days, 31% longer than in the similar-sized Shy Albatross (Thalassarche cauta) in Australia. The brood-guard stage for this chick lasted ca. 20–23 days. The estimated post-guard stage across all fledglings was 156 ± 10 days (range 143–179 days, N = 26).
Observed deaths or disappearances of monitored chicks was 42% in 2018, 4% in 2022, and 26% in 2023. There are large uncertainties in these and other figures because of camera failures, differences in start dates, and the difficulty of seeing
precisely what was happening at nests obscured by vegetation. In all but two occasions, both involving the late loss of a chick, adults continued to visit the nests intermittently, on average being recorded on 29% of days up to six weeks later.
Several recommendations are made, the key ones being:
- the need to review set-up protocols if objectives change
- the necessity of having more complete metadata about each site, including which nests, active or not, are present in the camera’s field of view
- orienting cameras to look down on occupied nests, rather than facing upwards
- the merit of photographing each site separately, from the same position and height as the trail camera at that site, and,
- ensuring that if cameras are changed midway through the season, their replacements cover the same field of view.
Publication information
Frost, P.G.H. 2025. Trail-camera monitoring of White-capped Albatross (Thalassarche steadi) on Disappointment Island, 2018–2023. Report to the Conservation Services Programme, Department of Conservation, Wellington.