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Péninsule Loranchet
The Péninsule Loranchet, also known as Presqu'île Loranchet, (Loranchet Peninsula in English) is a peninsula of Grande Terre, the main island of the subantarctic Kerguelen archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean. Description The peninsula occupies the north-western corner of Grande Terre and is named after Jean Loranchet, the first officer of Raymond Rallier du Baty’s second Kerguelen survey expedition in 1913. It has a rugged, mountainous interior, with altitudes exceeding 500 m and a coastline of steep cliffs deeply incised by fjords. It is some 50 km long with a width of up to 20 km. As with most of Grande Terre it is infested with introduced feral cats, rats and rabbits. Human visitation is infrequent. Important Bird Area The northern end of the peninsula, and the northernmost part of Grande Terre, extending northwards from the head of the Baie de la Dauphine, has been identified as a 60 km2 Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kerguelen Topographic Map-fr
The Kerguelen Islands ( or ; in French commonly ' but officially ', ), also known as the Desolation Islands (' in French), are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic constituting one of the two exposed parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, a large igneous province mostly submerged in the southern Indian Ocean. They are among the most isolated places on Earth, located more than from Madagascar. The islands, along with Adélie Land, the Crozet Islands, Amsterdam and Saint Paul islands, and France's Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean, are part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands and are administered as a separate district. The main island, Grande Terre, is in area, about three quarters of the size of Corsica, and is surrounded by a further 300 smaller islands and islets, forming an archipelago of . The climate is harsh and chilly with frequent high winds throughout the year. The surrounding seas are generally rough and they remain ice-free year-round. There are no in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird Colony
A bird colony is a large congregation of individuals of one or more species of bird that nest or roost in proximity at a particular location. Many kinds of birds are known to congregate in groups of varying size; a congregation of nesting birds is called a breeding colony. Colonial nesting birds include seabirds such as auks and albatrosses; wetland species such as herons; and a few passerines such as weaverbirds, certain blackbirds, and some swallows. A group of birds congregating for rest is called a communal roost. Evidence of colonial nesting has been found in non- neornithine birds ( Enantiornithes), in sediments from the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of Romania. Variations on colonial nesting in birds Approximately 13% of all bird species nest colonially. Nesting colonies are very common among seabirds on cliffs and islands. Nearly 95% of seabirds are colonial, leading to the usage, seabird colony, sometimes called a rookery. Many species of terns nest in colonie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Important Bird Areas Of Kerguelen
Importance is a property of entities that matter or make a difference. For example, World War II was an important event and Albert Einstein was an important person because of how they affected the world. There are disagreements in the academic literature about what type of difference is required. According to the causal impact view, something is important if it has a big causal impact on the world. This view is rejected by various theorists, who insist that an additional aspect is required: that the impact in question makes a value difference. This is often understood in terms of how the important thing affects the well-being of people. So on this view, World War II was important, not just because it brought about many wide-ranging changes but because these changes had severe negative impacts on the well-being of the people involved. The difference in question is usually understood counterfactually as the contrast between how the world actually is and how the world would have bee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Landforms Of The Kerguelen Islands
A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, mountains, canyons, and valleys, as well as shoreline features such as bays, peninsulas, and seas, including submerged features such as mid-ocean ridges, volcanoes, and the great ocean basins. Physical characteristics Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as elevation, slope, orientation, stratification, rock exposure and soil type. Gross physical features or landforms include intuitive elements such as berms, mounds, hills, ridges, cliffs, valleys, rivers, peninsulas, volcanoes, and numerous other structural and size-scaled (e.g. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountains) elements including various kinds of inland and oceanic waterbodies and sub-surface features. Mountains, hills, plateaux, and plains are the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern Elephant Seal
The southern elephant seal (''Mirounga leonina'') is one of two species of elephant seals. It is the largest member of the clade Pinnipedia and the order Carnivora, as well as the largest extant marine mammal that is not a cetacean. It gets its name from its massive size and the large proboscis of the adult male, which is used to produce very loud roars, especially during the breeding season. A bull southern elephant seal is about 40% heavier than a male northern elephant seal (''Mirounga angustirostris''), twice as heavy as a male walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus''), and 6–7 times heavier than the largest living mostly-terrestrial carnivoran, the polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') and the Kodiak bear (''Ursus arctos middendorffi''),. Taxonomy The southern elephant seal was one of the many species originally described by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in the landmark 1758 10th edition of his ''Systema Naturae'', where it was given the binomial name of ''Phoca leonina''. John Edw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antarctic Fur Seal
The Antarctic fur seal (''Arctocephalus gazella''), is one of eight seals in the genus '' Arctocephalus'', and one of nine fur seals in the subfamily Arctocephalinae. Despite what its name suggests, the Antarctic fur seal is mostly distributed in Subantarctic islands and its scientific name is thought to have come from the German vessel SMS Gazelle, which was the first to collect specimens of this species from Kerguelen Islands. Taxonomy Antarctic fur seals are member of the genus ''Arctocephalus''. Recently, a proposal was made to reassign this species to the resurrected genus ''Arctophoca''. Antarctic fur seals may be confused with southern otariids that share their range, like Subantarctic (''A. tropicalis''), New Zealand (''A. forsteri''), and South American fur seals (''A. australis''), and the Juan Fernandez fur seal (''A. phillippii''), as well as the South American (''Otaria flavescens'') and New Zealand sea lions (''Phocarctos hookeri''). Genetic studies on population ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eaton's Pintail
Eaton's pintail (''Anas eatoni'') is a dabbling duck of the genus ''Anas''. It is also known as the southern pintail. The species is restricted to the island groups of Kerguelen and Crozet in the southern Indian Ocean. It resembles a small female northern pintail. It was named after the English explorer and naturalist Alfred Edmund Eaton. It is threatened by introduced species, particularly feral cats, which prey on it. There are two subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...: ''A. eatoni eatoni'' (Kerguelen pintail) and ''A. eatoni drygalskii'' (Crozet pintail). References External links BirdLife Species Factsheet Eaton's pintail Birds of the Indian Ocean Birds of subantarctic islands Fauna of the Crozet Islands Fauna of the Kerguelen Islands ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kerguelen Tern
The Kerguelen tern (''Sterna virgata'') is a tern of the southern hemisphere. This seabird mainly breeds colonially in the Kerguelen Islands, as its common name implies. However, smaller colonies are also found in the Prince Edward Islands (i.e. Prince Edward and Marion) and Crozet Islands. The total number of individuals is from 3,500 to 6,500 birds, although there is no recent data from the main colony at Kerguelen. These birds do not inhabit Kerguelen proper, instead nesting on islets free of feral cats. During bad weather, they are known to abandon their colonies. Kerguelen terns are among the least-ranging of all typical terns. They generally do not reach far into the seas near their breeding grounds. These birds eat fish and marine invertebrates, especially those found in beds of the seaweed Macrocystis spp. They sometimes also hunt insects on land and catch fish from rivers on Kerguelen. There are two subspecies: *''S. v. mercuri'' (Voisin, 1971) – Crozet and Pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Light-mantled Albatross
The light-mantled albatross (''Phoebetria palpebrata'') also known as the grey-mantled albatross or the light-mantled sooty albatross, is a small albatross in the genus ''Phoebetria'', which it shares with the sooty albatross. The light-mantled albatross was first described as ''Phoebetria palpebrata'' by Johann Reinhold Forster, in 1785, based on a specimen from south of the Cape of Good Hope. Physiology Light-mantled albatrosses share some identifying features with other Procellariiformes. They have nasal tubes on the upper bill called naricorns, though with albatrosses these are on the sides of the upper mandible rather than the top. They also have a salt gland above the nasal passage which excretes a concentrated saline solution to maintain osmotic balance, due to the amount of seawater imbibed. The bills of the Procellariiformes are unique in that they are covered with from seven to nine horny plates. These birds produce a stomach oil made up of wax esters and triglycerides ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kerguelen Shag
The Kerguelen shag (''Leucocarbo verrucosus'') is a species of cormorant endemic to the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, one of the most isolated places on Earth. Many authorities consider it a subspecies of the imperial shag. Range and habitat This species nests on the coast of Grande Terre (the main island of the archipelago), on offshore islands, and on islands in the Golfe du Morbihan. It forages at sea throughout the archipelago, usually within of shore and especially in bays and inlets, though immatures have been seen rarely as far as . Reports from Heard Island and western Australia may be of ship-assisted birds. In the austral summer it feeds among kelp, sometimes at the bottom. Description The Kerguelen shag is long with a wingspan of , making it the smallest blue-eyed shag. The adult's upperparts, tail, and thighs are metallic greenish black; the underbody to the throat is white; and the wing linings are brown. Some individuals have white patches o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black-browed Albatross
The black-browed albatross (''Thalassarche melanophris''), also known as the black-browed mollymawk,Robertson, C. J. R. (2003) is a large seabird of the albatross family Diomedeidae; it is the most widespread and common member of its family. Taxonomy Mollymawks are albatrosses in the family Diomedeidae and order Procellariiformes, which also includes shearwaters, fulmars, storm petrels, and diving petrels. These birds share certain identifying features. They have nasal passages that attach to the upper bill called naricorns, although the nostrils on the albatross are on the sides of the bill. The bills of Procellariiformes are also unique in that they are split into between seven and nine horny plates. They produce a stomach oil made up of wax esters and triglycerides that is stored in the proventriculus. This is used against predators as well as being an energy-rich food source for chicks and also for the adults during their long flights. The albatross also has a salt gland a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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