Endangered
Pitt Shag
Phalacrocorax featherstoni
Pitt Shag is a bird in the family Phalacrocoracidae (order Suliformes) — Phalacrocorax featherstoni, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Members of the shag family belong to three groups, based on the color of their feet: black, yellow or pink. The Pitt shag belongs to the yellow footed group. The Pitt shag has a yellow colored detail around the eyes, light gray at the neck and chest, and the rest of the head, back, wings and tail with shades of black and navy.
Range and habitat
The Pitt shag is native to the Chatham Islands in New Zealand, islands such as the Chatham, Pitt, Rangatira, Mangere, Little Mangere, Western Reef, Pyramid, Sisters, Murumuru, Castle, Rabbit, Forty Fours and Star Keys. On an island the bird is located along the coast, on rocky islets and over nearby waters where breeding and foraging takes place such as the Te Whanga Lagoon. The Pitt shag, also known as the Pitt Island shag or Featherstone's shag, is a bird in the family Phalacrocoracidae.
It is endemic to Pitt Island where its natural habitats are open seas and rocky shores. Conservation actions done specifically for the Pitt shag are not very apparent, although other works on the Chatham Islands have been done such as withdrawing sheep and cattle from the South East and Mangere Islands in 1961 and 1968, and fencing coastal habitats to avoid possible interference.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Shags find food on their own, traveling up to 18 km from their territory to feed on mostly small fish and when possible snails, worms and crustaceans found flying over waters and shores. Parents take turns incubating the eggs for about 30 days, once hatched a single parent will stay with the chicks for two weeks, then both parents will search and feed their chicks until they fledge at around 6 to 8 weeks.
The bird with the color of a dark body, gray chest, yellow eyes and feet can be found in small groups in their breeding habitat or alone within 18 km from their territory searching for food.
In crisis
The species was close to extinction in 1905 but actions of conservation have been done ever since. The Pitt shag is threatened by habitat loss due to predation and climate change causing a decline from 1997 to 2012, but there is a recovery plan by the Department of Conservation. Apparently never a common species, it was reported as nearly extinct in 1905.
The Department of Conservation does have a recovery plan for this bird. The Pitt shag is claimed endangered due to its loss of breeding habitat and rapidly declining, small population.
Pitt Shag is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Pitt Shag, Wikidata item Q288868. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
