The Macquarie shag (''Leucocarbo purpurascens''), Macquarie Island shag or Macquarie Island cormorant, is a marine

cormorant Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed, but in 2021 the IOC adopted a consensus taxonomy of seven ge ...

native to

Macquarie Island Macquarie Island is an island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. Regionally part of Oceania and politically a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1900, it became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 197 ...

in the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-small ...

, about halfway between

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

Taxonomy

The Macquarie shag is one of the

blue-eyed shag ''Leucocarbo'' is a genus of birds in the family Phalacrocoracidae with the members commonly known as blue-eyed shags. This is a group of closely related cormorant taxa. Many have a blue, purple or red ring around the eye (not a blue iris); othe ...

s, sometimes placed in the

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

''Leucocarbo'' or ''Notocarbo''. Others place it in the genus Phalacrocorax. It is now usually considered to be a full species.

Distribution and habitat

The Macquarie shag is restricted to

subantarctic The sub-Antarctic zone is a region in the Southern Hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The subantarctic region includes many islands ...

Macquarie Island and the nearby Bishop and Clerk Islets, part of the Macquarie group, 33 km to the south. Apart from breeding and roosting, its habitat is marine.

Description

The Macquarie shag has largely black upperparts and white underparts. The upper cheeks and ear-coverts are black; there are white bars on the wings, a black, recurved crest over the forehead, and pink feet.Marchant & Higgins (1991), p.867. A breeding adult has a pair of orange caruncles above the base of the bill in front of the eyes, orange-brown facial skin at the base of the lower mandible, as well as blue eye-rings. It is about 75 cm in length, with a

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...

of 110 cm and a weight of 2.5–3.5 kg.

Behaviour

Macquarie shags are gregarious, roosting in groups of from a few birds up to several hundred.Marchant & Higgins (1991), p.868.

Breeding

The birds are present all year round at Macquarie Island, where they breed annually in small to large

colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

on bare rocky shores and stacks. Nest-building takes place from June. Nests are truncated cones, 20–30 cm in height, built of vegetation,

guano Guano (Spanish from qu, wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. G ...

and mud. The clutch of two or three eggs is laid between mid-September and January, mainly in late September and early November, with most eggs hatching by late December. Most chicks are independent of their parents by mid-February.

Feeding

The birds forage locally in shallow coastal waters,DEWHA website with the diet consisting primarily of

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

. Flocks may feed together.

Status and conservation

The Macquarie shag population was estimated in 2000 to comprise about 760 breeding pairs, including 100 pairs at the Bishop and Clerk Islets.Garnett & Crowley (2000). A later (October 2003) survey found 472 nesting pairs in eleven colonies on Macquarie Island itself, indicating a 30% decline.Schulz & Lynn (2003). The taxon is listed as Vulnerable under Australia's

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 The ''Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999'' (Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia that provides a framework for protection of the Australian environment, including its biodiversity and its natural and cultu ...

, because the population is small, localised and subject to fluctuations in breeding success due to weather conditions and food availability. Other threats include predation of nestlings by Subantarctic skuas and

black rat The black rat (''Rattus rattus''), also known as the roof rat, ship rat, or house rat, is a common long-tailed rodent of the stereotypical rat genus ''Rattus'', in the subfamily Murinae. It likely originated in the Indian subcontinent, but is n ...

Notes

References

* DEWH
(Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts) - ''Leucocarbo atriceps purpurascens'' - Imperial Shag (Macquarie Island).
Accessed 18 February 2009. * Garnett, Stephen T.; & Crowley, Gabriel M. (2000). ''The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2000''. Environment Australia: Canberra.

* Marchant, S.; & Higgins, P.J. (eds). (1991). ''Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds. Volume 1: Ratites to Ducks''. Oxford University Press: Melbourne. * Schulz, M.; & Lynn, J. (2003). ''Burrowing petrels on Macquarie Island, late March to early December 2003''. Report to Nature Conservation Branch, Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment, Hobart, Tasmania. Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment, Hobart, Tasmania. {{Taxonbar, from=Q1262501

Macquarie shag The Macquarie shag (''Leucocarbo purpurascens''), Macquarie Island shag or Macquarie Island cormorant, is a marine cormorant native to Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean, about halfway between Australia and Antarctica. Taxonomy The Macquarie ...

Macquarie Island Birds of subantarctic islands

Birds of Australia