Diving behaviour and diet of the blue-eyed shag at South Georgia

摘要: This paper describes a concurrent investigation of individual variation in diet, diving patterns and performance blue-eyed shags Phalacrocorax atriceps breeding at South Georgia. Within one day exhibited three foraging strategies: short (4 birds, all dives 120 s) mixed (15 predominantly long but with few dives). The mean number per was significantly higher that only made (mean=172.0, SE=43.2) than birds strategy (mean=40.5, SE=4.7) (mean=30.8, SE=1.8). Diet assessed using hard remains recovered from pellets regurgitated by the shags. Small nototheniid fish (c. 10 kJ item) were far commonest prey most contained additional items. frequency items energy value (10.c. 900 item), lower (>1–10 both strikingly similar to making long, respectively. Predicted aerobic dive limits suggested during dives, probably sustained anaerobic metabolism. Models capture rates demonstrated for diving, many must be caught when are feeding on end range. recorded (small fish) differ markedly between two strategies.