🚨New paper out
Our study reveals how barn owl parents coordinate nightly chick feeding. Females step up when males underperform & pairs that meet more often at the nest share work more equally boosting chick survival🦉
doi.org/10.1016/j.is...
@unil.bsky.social @vogelwarte.bsky.social #movementecology

🌘 Flight activity peaked at night (possibly aligning with prey vertical migration)

💤 Water activity (rest & light movement) increased during the day

🏊We revealed intense surface activity which may reflect prey grabbing/scavenging & flying-intensive events that might show aerial-dipping foraging

We classified 6 behaviors from accelerometry data using a machine learning model.
At sea, petrels spent:
✈️ >75% in flight (mostly dynamic soaring)
🌊 The rest on water: resting, low-level activity, or bursts of surface action

2 additional behaviors were recorded at their burrow nest (not in figure)

We tracked Bermuda petrels (cahows) during incubation using lightweight biologgers:
📍 Trips spanned ~1200 km
📆 Duration: ~10 days

🤿 99.99% of depth readings were <10 cm.
Only 5 shallow dives were recorded, none deeper than 1.57 m.

Despite specializing on deep-sea prey, cahows forage at the surface

🚨New paper out🚨
We used fine-scale GPS, depth & accelerometry data to reveal foraging activity of the endangered Bermuda petrel.

Thanks: @campioni-leti.bsky.social & collab. effort of Bermuda Conserv. Dept, Canad. Wildlife Service & ISPA Portugal

A thread 🧵

#seabirds #biologging #movementecology

Early arrival of White-Tailed Tropicbirds in Bermuda islands recorded on eBird few days ago ebird.org/region/BM/bi... Another data point confirming the 70-year long-term trend in early arrivals ➡️ link.springer.com/article/10.1...
What's the trigger?
#Bermuda #Tropicbird #Seabirds #climatechange

Our fine-scale movement data show roles spanning uniparental male care to highly balanced effort. Females often ramp up hunting when the male’s performance drops (see GIF) or resources seem scarce. This dynamic coordination buffers offspring against changing conditions.

Very happy today to have presented my almost finished project at the internal seminar of the Dept. of Ecology and Evolution in Lausanne about facultative biparental care in barn owls! A lot of positive feedback and interesting chats! @unil.bsky.social

Already almost 2 weeks ago we came back from amazing #fieldwork in #galapagos islands! Incredible experience working with one of the most endangered seabirds, the Galapagos petrel. 😍 I already miss that magical place