Trans-equatorial migration routes, staging sites and wintering areas of a High-Arctic avian predator: the Long-tailed Skua (Stercorarius longicaudus).

2013

The Long-tailed Skua, a small (,300 g) Arctic-breeding predator and seabird, is a functionally very important component of the Arctic vertebrate communities in summer, but little is known about its migration and winter distribution. We used lightlevel geolocators to track the annual movements of eight adult birds breeding in north-east Greenland (n = 3) and Svalbard (n = 5). All birds wintered in the Southern Hemisphere (mean arrival-departure dates on wintering grounds: 24 October-21 March): five along the south-west coast of Africa (0–40uS, 0–15uE), in the productive Benguela upwelling, and three further south (30–40uS, 0–50uE), in an area extending into the south-west Indian Ocean. Diffe…