IMIS

The 21 birds tracked during incubation in 2000 and 2001 were part of a study of sensory ecology and navigation; 10 and 9 of them had, respectively, small (3.5 g) magnets or brass sham magnets affixed to their heads during their trips. All 19 of the magnet and sham birds showed the same 'commuter' foraging behavior seen during previous satellite tracking in 1995 and 1996 (Anderson et al. 1998, Fernández et al. 2001) and in the two unmanipulated birds tracked in 2000 and 2001. The satellite-tracked Waved Albatross traveled to the Peruvian shelf in relatively straight flights, remaining in the upwelling region for several days, and then returning directly to Española.

Funding was provided by the United States National Science Foundation (grant DEB 96-29539 to D.J.A.), the Carlsberg Foundation (to H.M.), the National Geographic Society, Canadian NSERC, the VolkswagenStiftung (Nachwuchgruppen Grant to H.M.), a CIAR Fellowship, an NSERC fellowship, Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (NCE) grants to B.J.F., the Wake Forest University Sullivan and Richter Funds, and the Field Research for Conservation Program at the St. Louis Zoo.

Argos System ground-truthing conducted at the site in 1995 (Anderson et al. 1998) showed that the lowest quality locations, Class B, had a mean error of 17.8 km (9.6 nautical miles; Anderson et al., 1998). Thus, only high-quality Argos locations are presented here. A total of 101 locations from 14 birds (14.9 % LQC-1, 6.9 % LQC-2, 4.0 % LQC-3, 32.7 % LQC-0, 41.6 % LQ-A) and 356 locations from 21 birds (13.2 % LQC-1, 5.3 % LQC-2, 3.4 % LQC-3, 32.0 % LQC-0, 46.1 % LQ-A) are reported for 2000 and 2001, respectively.