King penguin census data, Gadget Gully, Macquarie Island (1993-2008) ...

• Main Author: Australian Antarctic Data Centre
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Australian Antarctic Data Centre 2023
• Subjects: King Penguins; Macquarie Island
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.15468/zj50ll; https://www.gbif.org/dataset/96a682ee-f762-11e1-a439-00145eb45e9a

Ground counts of King Penguin Aptenodytes patagonicuseggs, chicks, fledglings and adults at Gadget Gully on Macquarie Island (1993-2008 incomplete). Counts were obtained in the field by observers at Gadget gully. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when blubber oil fuelled house lamps, the king penguin population at Macquarie Island was reduced from two very large (perhaps hundreds of thousands of birds) colonies to about 3000 birds. One colony, located on the isthmus when the island was discovered in 1810, was extinct by 1894 and it took about 100 years for king penguins to re-establish a viable breeding population there. Here we document this recovery. The first eggs laid at Gadget Gully on the isthmus were recorded in late February 1995 but in subsequent years egg laying took place earlier between November and February (this temporal discontinuity is a consequence of king penguin breeding behaviour). The first chick was hatched in April 1995 but the first fledging was not raised until the ...