Christmas Island frigatebird

How it lives

The species breeds only on Christmas Island, in four main nesting colonies. Frigatebirds normally breed every other year, and chicks are cared for up to 15 months after hatching. Males have a black body, a white belly patch and an inflatable red throat pouch for courtship, while females have a whiter chest and belly. GPS tracking from 2005 to 2010 showed that, outside breeding, females roosted on the Sunda Shelf for months.

Where it goes

Satellite and GPS tracking show that the birds range far from Christmas Island. In a poor food year (2010), males shifted to productive coastal waters near Java while females stayed closer to the colony, and after breeding females roosted on the Sunda Shelf for months. Birds outside the breeding season spread across Southeast Asian waters, from Indochina south to northern Australia, and a few are recorded in places such as Singapore as very rare visitors.

We only draw a journey on the map when scientists have tracked it or clearly documented it. For this animal we have not found one yet.

Populations

Global: Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (CMS and GBIF records), after earlier being listed as Critically Endangered according to Wikipedia. The year of the current assessment was not shown on the pages read. Wikipedia reports about 1,200 breeding pairs in 2003, which suggests 3,600 to 7,200 adults; newer counts were not read. Threats include persecution by fishermen, loss of breeding habitat to phosphate mining, marine pollution and entanglement in fishing gear. The species is on CITES Appendix I, and on CMS Appendix I since 2017.