Malta's Wind Chaser
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Geoffrey Saliba
BirdLife Malta Campaigns Coordinator
The bird approaches its nest only in the cover of darkness. It rears its chick
in deep burrows safely tucked away in the crevices of steep and rugged cliff
edges. Little was known about it until a team of researchers took on the task
of discovering the bird's secrets.
Yelkouan Shearwaters are perfectly adapted to life at sea, with glands to filter excess salt out of their bodies,
the ability to dive up to 30m deep in search of prey and waterproof feathers. Photo by Frank Dhermain.
That bird is the Yelkouan Shearwater, Turkish for 'wind chaser', and Malta
hosts 10 per cent of the global population. The largest colony, with around
one-third of the national population, is that of Rdum tal-Madonna, in Mellieha,
situated in the north of the island.
The sea bird adapted to spending its life at sea, capable of diving up to 30
metres and filtering salt through special glands on its beak, allowing it to
spend long periods at sea without access to fresh water. Yet, not much was
known about this unique bird's breeding habits and migratory patterns.
That was the mission of the EU LIFE Yelkouan Shearwater project - a project
that has seen researchers abseiling down a sheer cliff face in pitch black,
carrying state of the art equipment to fit to the birds. Researchers only had
access to these birds when they returned to their colonies during the breeding
and rearing season.
The EU Life Yelkouan Shearwater project used state of the art technology to discover
the fishing grounds and flight patterns of these secretive seabirds. Photo by Andre Raine.
Observing these birds was no easy task as they spend almost all their time out
at sea. To overcome this hurdle the latest tracking technology was used to
identify important feeding areas, migratory patterns and wintering grounds.
Data loggers revealed where breeding adults go to feed, and where they raft
before returning to their nests under cover of darkness. Several different key
feeding areas were identified, including inshore areas, a large area of ocean
up to 285 km to the southeast of Malta, and an area near the southern coast of
Sicily.
With data coming in on key marine areas during the breeding season, the next
step was to look at where the birds went once they left their nesting sites in
July. Did they stay in Maltese waters, or head further afield?
Adults were fitted with tiny 2.5g geolocators, and were recaptured the
following year when they returned to their nest sites. It became apparent that
many adults spent a portion of the winter in the Black Sea, travelling up
through the Aegean Sea. They returned to Malta as early as October, where they
then split their time between Maltese waters, the North African coast, and, in
some cases, the Adriatic Sea.
Juvenile birds were more difficult, as they don't normally come back to their
colonies in the first year and may not necessarily return to the same colonies
when they do return. The young birds were therefore fitted with satellite tags
to transmit the data – making the process much easier. It emerged that young
Yelkouans on their first ever journey away from their nests initially headed
eastwards. Many of the birds then journeyed up into the Aegean Sea, while a
select few by-passed the Aegean and toured the eastern Mediterranean and North
African coasts.
If the project started off with a blank map of the Mediterranean, the intensive
research undertaken on these birds has now dotted the map with GPS points.
Thanks to those long nights down the cliffs, we now know much more about these
birds' marine habits, migration routes and wintering grounds.
Research on the feeding habits of seabirds like the Yelkouan Shearwater help identify areas rich in marine life,
important for other marine species like the dolphin. Photo by Andre Raine.
The team's findings reconfirmed that Malta is a very important location for
seabirds. The data collected through the project is helping to identify those
marine areas richest in wildlife – areas which are consequently important to
protect.
The EU LIFE Yelkouan Shearwater project, four years of research that came to an
end June this year, is a partnership of four governmental bodies and three
conservation organisations. The project is 50% sponsored by the EU Life Unit
with additional support from the Malta Environment and Planning Authority and
HSBC Cares for the Environment Fund.
For more information please visit:
http://birdlifemalta.org/conservation/LIFE_project/
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