Talk:Westland petrel

Editing article during Barrytown editathon

Proposing article structure as follows:

• Taxonomy
• Description - including of the egg, chick/juvenile & adult, including any difference between male & female of species.
• Distribution - historic and current
• Habitat - preferred habitat of the species
• Ecology and behaviour - Have subsections on breeding, feeding and longevity. Include such things as flight description, ability to eat large fruits of endemic plant species etc.
• Predators and parasites
• Relationship to humans - subsection In Māori culture - as taonga; as food; etc
• Conservation - information on history of the conservation of species and then current conservation status. Possible subsection on citizen science projects aiming to protect or conserve the species. - Ambrosia10 (talk) 20:33, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I will begin by drafting content about the initiatives to reduce lighting at night near Punakaiki, to help prevent the disorientation and crash landing of fledglings on roads and around th town. Marshelec (talk) 20:48, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Sounds great! I've tweaked the structure and have added sections that will require and assist with expansion. But first I'm in the process of fixing all the references adding links, archiving content etc. I'll have a go at adding the NZ Threat Classification as well at some point. So much to do! Ambrosia10 (talk) 20:59, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

First description

I can't find a copy of the first description of this species "Falla, R.A. 1946. An undescribed form of the black petrel. Records of the Canterbury Museum 5: 111-113." which I would REALLY like to cite. - Ambrosia10 (talk) 22:57, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Managed to find this resource and incorporate it as a citation into the article. I also ran the copyright violation tool over the article to check for any infringments. - Ambrosia10 (talk)

Feedback received

I received the following feedback from Bruce Menteath about the article :

• Paragraph 2 - Yes, they are nocturnal. But not exclusively so … just as happy to feed during the day. The petrels feed on squid when they come to the surface at night.
• Paragraph 3 – severe storm … it was the tail end of cyclone Ita.
• Paragraph 5 – the word taiko is a generic name for any petrel species.
• Paragraph 9 – Distribution and habitat – the breeding range covers and area 2.5 km x 5.5 km – not 8 km wide!
• Paragraph 11 - Distribution and habitat – during the breeding season they occasionally circumnavigate the South Island – see attached article
• Paragraph 12 - Breeding and life cycle – large size and “…aggressive behaviour…” This characteristic of the adults has been adopted by some bureaucrats as an excuse for hands off management, and has not prevented mass predation by dogs, at least. Need to emphasise that this aggressiveness only applies to the adults. Fledglings are very docile and thus very vulnerable to predation.
• Paragraph 13 - Breeding and life cycle - Fledging does not finish in mid-January – there are very few fledglings left to depart by mid-December. Fledglings found in mid-January will be victims of fallout that have crash landed and are exhausted by their efforts at getting airborne again.
• Paragraph 13 – “…total, chick rearing takes between two and four months.” Error – chicks are a long way from fully grown at 2 months. Takes four months to fledging
• Paragraph 14 – Diet and foraging – Ditto above – the only time they are exclusively nocturnal is when they come in to their breeding grounds.
• Paragraph 18 – predation – Weka and stoats do not prey on adult Westland Petrel. From my observations it is unlikely that weka will prey on fledglings either.

Marshelec (talk) 08:08, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

It gets annoyingly fiddly when true data is not in a reliable source (or differs from same). Hopefully some stuff has been published recently Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:39, 1 August 2022 (UTC)