Balearic Shearwater (1 Viewer)

Guilford, Wynn, McMinn, Rodríguez, Fayet, Maurice, Jones & Meier 2012. Geolocators reveal migration and pre-breeding behaviour of the critically endangered Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus. PLoS ONE 7(3): e33753: 1–8. [pdf]

What an excellent work!

"Our study shows that geolocation technology is a valuable tool for assessing the spatial distribution of risks to this critically endangered species, and also provides a low-impact method for remotely observing the detailed behaviour of seabird species that may be sensitive to disturbance from traditional study methods"

Yelkouan Shearwater

'Only' vulnerable, rather than critically endangered, but still depressing...

• Bonnaud, Berger, Bourgeois, Legrand & Vida (in press). Predation by cats could lead to the extinction of the Mediterranean endemic Yelkouan Shearwater Puffinus yelkouan at a major breeding site. Ibis. [abstract]

BirdLife Species factsheet...

Updated population viability analysis to re-evaluate the species's status is planned, incorporating recent population estimates and improved demographic data. Should this analysis reveal that the species is declining at a more moderate rate, this species will warrant downlisting.

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Arroyo, Mateos-Rodríguez, Muñoz, de la Cruz, Cuenca & Onrubia (in press). New population estimates of a critically endangered species, the Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus, based on coastal migration counts. BCI. [abstract]

The addition of both counted and estimated birds reveals figures of between 23,780 and 26,535 Balearic Shearwaters migrating along the north coast of the Strait of Gibraltar in each of the four years of our study.

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(It always seemed rather dubious that Balearic Shearwater could really qualify for categorisation as CR.)

Read this article a while ago but revisited it again and I see that it was overlooked here:

Louzao M, Delord K, García D, Boué A, Weimerskirch H (2012) Protecting Persistent Dynamic Oceanographic Features: Transboundary Conservation Efforts Are Needed for the Critically Endangered Balearic Shearwater. PLoS ONE 7(5): e35728. Full-text

Among other things, the paper showed the importance of the North African coast for the species. This quoted from the abstract (the maps also very interesting):

"Our tracking study indicates that Balearic shearwaters do not only forage along the Iberian continental shelf but also in more distant marine areas along the North African coast, in particular W of Algeria, but also NE coast of Morocco. Birds recurrently visit these shelf areas at the end of the breeding season".