Short communications1997 75 AN INFRARED DEVICE FOR FINDING WILSON’S STORM PETREL OCEANITES OCEANICUS NESTS

• Main Author: José Luis Orgeira
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1996
• Subjects: Beck; Cierva; Danco; Danco Coast; Cierva Point; Wasilewski; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.497.5300; http://www.marineornithology.org/PDF/25/25_15.pdf

cavities beneath rocks, moss mats and soil (Warham 1990). Their nests, mostly out of sight, consist of a complex entrance and a chamber generally situated at about 30 cm beneath the surface (Beck & Brown 1972). However, at Cierva Point, Danco Coast, Antarctica Peninsula some breeding chambers were found to be at one metre deep (pers. obs.). Novatti (1978) reported nests with more than one entrance or exit. The complexity in the nest structure together with the species’ nocturnal activity contribute to making a study of Wilson’s Storm Petrel populations logistically difficult. Wasilewski (1986) concluded that the problem of estimating absolute numbers of petrel remains open, and to date population density data have been obtained through indirect estimations due to the difficulty of detecting the exact number of nests beneath the surface. In fact, several methods for nest locali-