Dead or alive?

[Fabs Forns]

My first impression when coming to the Cape, (Cape St. Mary's, NL), was the amount of dead chicks all around. Yo my amazement, I discovered later that this is the way the sleep. with the head dropping down all the way. I even saw one being fed and immediately drop the head ans if being hit with a hammer!

[Juan Aragonés]

Hey, that is exactly the way how I sleep :D:D:D

Interesting behavioral image Fabs, he really looks dead

[Krijn Trimbos]

Haha, so the minute you get some food in ya, you'll drop your head on the table juan?? You must have a hard head :D. Very nice behavior capture, didn't know they act like that. Thanks for showing!

[John Chardine]

Nice Fabs. Thanks for posting. True seabirds like gannets are under huge pressure to deliver the energy required by the chick to the nest. This is because they often have to commute long distances from the food source to the nest. They also have constraints on payload- how much food they can take off, fly and land with. This is why most true seabirds only lay one egg. They cannot bring enough food to the nest to raise more than one chick. On the chick side seabird chicks are adapted to grow and put on mass despite infrequent feeding. They do this through some interesting physiology involving insulin. They lay down huge amounts of fat to get them through periods of infrequent feeding and often end up bigger and heavier than their parents by the end of the development period. Another thing the chicks do is conserve energy and this is what your chick is doing. The perfect situation for a seabird chick is to be thermally neutral- not use any energy to heat or cool their body (parents help with this), and to rest as much as possible.

[Fabs Forns]

Fascinating, John, thanks for the explanation :)

[Grace Scalzo]

John and Fabs, this thread is a perfect example of why I love BPN. Continuing thanks to you both,

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Very interesting explanation, thanks, John!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Wow........thanks for the picture and explanation! I would have definitely thought dead!

[Brian Wong]

I'm so glad this section was added to BPN! So much interesting information, and great bird education all at once! So cool!!!

[Anita Rakestraw]

Agree, this is a terrific forum! Fabs, thanks for sharing this and John, for the great information. That chick sure does look dead!! :eek:

[Judd Patterson]

I would have thought the chick was dead too...great explanation and thanks for sharing the image Fabs!

[Steve Wheeler]

Agree with all of the above... Very interesting indeed!

John... Thank you for sharing you understanding!

Fabs... Thank you for sharing your pictures!

Steve

[Julie Kenward]

That is absolutely fascinating! This forum is a blast. Beats the heck out of anything I ever learned in school!

[Rosl Roessner]

Haha, want to see you asleep Juan! :-))