Black-winged Petrels (Pterodroma nigripennis) seen since 1959 in the Tasman Sea and between 1970 and 1979 in the South-west Pacific are charted to show their distribution in the region. They are absent from the end of June to the end of October. The limited information on their breeding islands is reviewed and is amplified whenever
possible by unpublished data
The breeding of the South Island Fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa fuliginosa) was studied at Kowhai Bush, Kaikoura, for three breeding seasons from 1976 to 1978. Although 372 birds (nestlings and adults) were banded, few were seen again and very few bred in the study area. Breeding occurred from August to February. Some pairs raised three broods but attempted up to five if failures occurred. Details are given of nests, nest building, egg laying, clutch size, incubation, hatching and fledging success, and juveniles. Both sexes shared nest building, incubation, brooding, feeding nestlings and feeding juveniles, although the division of labour was sometimes unequal. Some aspects of behaviour differed slightly from that of the North Island subspecies. Females bred at one year old, but males could breed within one or two months of fledging when paired with an adult. A seemingly unpaired female successfully raised a brood of three young. Juveniles from one family group sometimes joined another family group and were accepted and fed by the foster parents. Black pairs produced young in the ratio of three black to one pied, and black x pied matings produced approximately equal numbers of black and pied young. Pied pairs produced 97.8% pied and 2.2% black young, which conflicts with the model previously proposed for the genetics of melanism in the Fantail.
The size of the sooty shearwater (Puffinus griseus) population at the Snares Islands was estimated by counting burrows in the main vegetation types. Some 3,287,000 burrows were calculated for Main Island, the highest densities being 1.9/m2 in Poa meadows, with 1.2/m2 under the trees of the Olearia forest. Most burrows were occupied but data on rates of occupation by breeding birds were not satisfactory. Assuming a 75% occupancy rate. we get a total population of about 2,750,000 burrow-holding pairs on the 328 ha of the two largest islands.
Members of the first party to camp on the Bounty Islands in 170 years report on the ecology, behaviour and history of the penguin, mollymawk, cape petrel, prion, shag and tern that breed there and on the giant petrel, skua, gull and starling that stray there.
The relationships of the New Zealand Wrens have been debated for a century but up to 1981 it has not been clear to which suborder of the Passeriformes they should be assigned. Comparisons between the single-copy DNA sequences of Acanthisitta
chloris and those of other passerine birds indicate that the Acanthisittidae are members of the suboscine suborder Oligomyodi, and that they are sufficiently distant from other suboscine passerines to warrant separation as an Infraorder, Acanthisittides.
Herausgegeben von Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim – Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Editor. Vol. 9. Pigeons to Woodpeckers. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Wiesbaden, 1980. 1148 pp.
Note: OSNZ News Volume 20 is a supplement to Notornis Volume 28 (3), not Volume 28 (2).