Leucocarbo ranfurlyi
The Bounty Shag (Leucocarbo ranfurlyi) is a striking medium-sized cormorant, endemic exclusively to the remote, windswept Bounty Islands in the New Zealand subantarctic. Adults are characterized by their glossy black upperparts and pure white underparts, accentuated by a distinctive white patch on each wing, visible even when folded. Their bill is dark, legs and feet are pinkish-yellow, and a small area of bare orange-yellow facial skin surrounds a bright blue eye-ring, which intensifies duri...
This species exclusively inhabits the rocky, barren, and windswept Bounty Islands archipelago. It nests on steep cliffs and rock ledges from sea level to higher elevations, foraging in the cold, nutrient-rich waters immediately surrounding the islands.
Their diet primarily consists of small, demersal fish (such as Nototheniidae and flatfish), as well as squid and crustaceans. Prey is captured through efficient pursuit diving in the cold subantarctic waters.
Bounty Shags are diurnal, spending their days foraging and resting, and roosting colonially on rocky outcrops and cliff faces. They are pursuit divers, using their powerful webbed feet for propulsion while hunting for prey near the seabed, often in kelp beds or shallower coastal waters. During th...
The Bounty Shag is an extraordinarily localized species, strictly endemic to the Bounty Islands, a small, uninhabited subantarctic archipelago that is a territory of New Zealand. This isolated island group is situated approximately 700 kilometers southeast of the South Island of New Zealand, serv...
Vulnerable
- The Bounty Shag is one of the world's most geographically restricted bird species, found only on the tiny Bounty Islands. - Its entire global population lives on an archipelago with a total land area of merely 1.3 square kilometers (0.5 square miles). - Despite its limited range, the population...