Chicks starving in Newfoundland as warmer sea water imperils food supply for birds

[Chris Merkord]

Northern gannets are good parents. The seabirds mate for life, lay just one egg a year and dutifully feed and protect their chick until it leaves the nest in September.

 

But this year, thousands of gannets on Newfoundland’s south coast — on North America’s most southern gannet colony — abandoned their nests during the last few weeks of August. Many of the hungry chicks soon began tumbling off rocky cliffs and into the sea.

 

It could be a harbinger of things, say scientists at the Audubon Society who have made the bold prediction that climate change could “imperil” nearly half  of North America’s birds by the end of the century.

 

Read more: http://www.canada.com/life/Chicks+starving+Newfoundland+warmer+water+imperils+food+supply+birds/10208607/story.html

[Chris Merkord]

The part of the article I found most interesting:
 

But some scientists are critical of the Audubon campaign and its sweeping predictions, saying it is masterful marketing but sketchy science.
 
André Desrochers, a wildlife biologist and avid birder at Laval University, says the mallard projection is “totally nonsensical.”
 
“The mallard has increased by an order of magnitude in the last few decades — it’s totally adaptive to all kinds of impacted habitats,” Desrochers says.
 
He says Audubon’s projections for birds seen in Quebec are “full of holes” and “point to a very sloppy job.”