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Satellite telemetry reveals post-breeding movements of Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica from Røst, North Norway

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Abstract

In 3 different years we glued 29-g satellite transmitters to the back feathers of five Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica breeding in Røst, southwest of the Lofoten Islands. The birds were tracked for a mean of 26 (range 7–46) days, and four were re-sighted (without transmitters) at their nest sites in the following year. The trajectories documented a unidirectional post-breeding migration towards the Barents Sea, completely opposite of that indicated by all but 1 of the 27 existing ring recoveries of adult puffins from colonies in North Norway outside the breeding season. We discuss the importance of what seems to be a regular visit to the Barents Sea in early autumn for puffins from Røst, which is still one of the largest puffin colonies in the world.

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Acknowledgments

The study received financial support from the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and the Research Council of Norway. Helpful advice on the telemetry methods was provided by Paul Howey and numerous colleagues around the world who responded to a SEABIRD Listserver request and shared their experiences relevant to the subject. Permission to instrument the puffins in the ways described in this paper was granted by the Norwegian Animal Research Authority and the Directorate for Nature Management and carried out in accordance with the mandatory certification of FELASA category C researchers (TAN) and the appurtenant European Council guidelines for Laboratory Animal Science. We thank Henrik Brøseth and Kjetil Solbakken for assisting in the instrumentation of birds, Tone Kristin Reiertsen for sexing bird 4 by means of PCR amplification, Olav J. Runde and Vidar Bakken for providing the ring recovery data, and Rob Barrett, Anders Mosbech and two anonymous referees for valuable comments to the manuscript.

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  1. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, 7485, Trondheim, Norway

    Tycho Anker-Nilssen & Tomas Aarvak

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  1. Tycho Anker-Nilssen
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  2. Tomas Aarvak
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Correspondence to Tycho Anker-Nilssen.

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Anker-Nilssen, T., Aarvak, T. Satellite telemetry reveals post-breeding movements of Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica from Røst, North Norway. Polar Biol 32, 1657–1664 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-009-0665-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-009-0665-7

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