Where Antarctic predatory seabirds overwinter
In order to identify the flight routes of the birds, postgraduate Matthias Kopp, under the guidance of Dr. Peter, equipped South Polar skuas with geolocators in their breeding areas on King George Island, about 120 kilometers off the Antarctic Mainland. Thus he has been screening their position data over a period of several years, followed by an analysis together with British colleagues and a scientist from Switzerland. "With the help of these data we can now for the first time definitely say that the South Polar skuas are not overwintering, like their close relatives, the brown skuas, off the Argentine coast but mainly in the northern hemisphere", explains the head of research, Dr. Peter. So far the scientists could only speculate about where the birds overwinter and which routes they are heading for. "The observation of single birds led us to the assumption that they overwinter in the Atlantic. But...