The short-tailed albatross were creatures of habit, according to a new study that found they returned to Vancouver Island to feed for generations over a 4,200-year period before being driven to the precipice of extinction by feather hunters.
The evidence may be the key to helping the birds back from extinction, said the study’s lead author, Eric Guiry, a lecturer at the University of Leicester in England.
The birds’ potential ranges span thousands of kilometres of wide, open spaces along the Pacific coastline and across oceans, but Guiry said the animals still preferred certain hunting and feeding grounds.
“This kind of feeding behaviour has only recently been discovered in birds today,” he said in an interview. “But we’ve got evidence of it happening over thousands of years. The same birds go into the same area for their entire lives.”
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