The dataset contains boundaries of nest areas of surface nesting flying seabirds at numerous breeding sites across Prydz Bay, Antarctica. The sites are at islands in the Rauer Group, the Svenner Islands and two islands (Bluff Island and Gardner Island) off the Vestfold Hills. The boundary data were obtained from aerial photos of slopes where flying seabirds had been previously observed. The aerial photos were taken on 1 December 2017. Marcus Salton and Kim Kliska conducted the aerial photography and delineated the GIS boundaries representing the nesting areas. The database of potential Adelie penguin breeding habitat as described by the metadata record 'Sites of potential habitat for breeding Adelie penguins in East Antarctica' (http://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/AAS_4088_Adelie_Potential_Habitats) was used to associate flying seabird nest areas to a particular island and to structure how the boundaries are stored. The Adelie penguin breeding site database has a unique identifying code for every island in East Antarctica, and the islands are aggregated into spatial sub-groups and then spatial groups. The file structure in which the boundaries are stored has a combination of ‘island’, ‘sub-group’ and ‘spatial group’ (or region) at the top level (eg VES_SG_10 contains all boundaries in spatial group VES (Vestfold Hills and islands) and sub-group 10). Within each sub-group folder are folders for each island where photos were taken (eg IS_72276 is Gardner Island in the VES_SG_10 group). The data is comprised of: (i) a polygon shapefile for each island on which flying bird nest areas were observed; and (ii) a single polygon shapefile for each of Rauer Group, Svenner Islands and Vestfold Hills in which the polygons in (i) are combined. The polygons in the shapefiles have a Type attribute with values ranging from A to E. A = Nests present B = Searched and no nests present C = Nests or salt stains (the investigators were unable to decide whether what they were seeing was nests or salt stains) D = Snow cover E = Not searched

This dataset consists of two shapefiles created by Darren Southwell of the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) by digitising the boundaries of adelie penguin colonies at the Rauer Group and the Vestfold Hills. The digitising was done from images resulting from the scanning and georeferencing of aerial photographs taken on 24 November 1993. The aerial photographs were taken for the AAD with a Linhof camera. Records of the photographs are included in the Australian Antarctic Data Centre's Aerial Photograph Catalogue.

Aerial and ground photos taken during a visit to Mount Biscoe in 1985 were used to map the extent of old guano and unoccupied pebble nests found in the area. The guano extended from the beach up the northern slope of the massif to an altitude of approximately 200m. Very few birds were present when the site was visited. The map was hand drawn and put into the paper documented below. With the aid of satellite imagery, the diagram was converted into a shapefile for the purposes of mapping the potential colony extent in this location. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

Occupancy surveys in November 2008 (Southwell and Emmerson 2013) found a total of 13 Adelie penguin breeding sites in the Rauer Group. The boundaries of breeding sub-colonies at 12 of these sites were subsequently mapped from vertical aerial photographs taken for abundance surveys on 21-23 November 2009 (for details of aerial photography see Southwell et al. 2013). The boundaries were mapped with a buffer distance of approximately 1-3 m from the perimeter of penguin sub-colonies. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

This dataset comprises oblique aerial photographs of multiple Adelie penguin breeding sites in East Antarctica. The photographs were taken using hand-held digital cameras from fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters used by the Australian Antarctic Program. The aircraft flew at or above the minimum wildlife approach altitude of 750 m with a horizontal offset distance from the site of approximately 500-600m. The date and exact location of the aircraft when each photo was taken is embedded in the EXIF data of each photo. All photographs that were taken are included despite varying image quality due to environmental conditions, camera type and altitude. Generally an attempt was made to photograph the entire breeding site (usually an island, occasionally an outcrop of continental rock) with a series of zoomed, overlapping photos. Sometimes this was not possible when the site was large, and in these cases the overlapping photos covered the locations where colonies were known to exist from previous survey work. In some cases a site was over-flown at an altitude of 1200m so that a single photo of the entire site could be taken. These photos are useful in piecing together the detailed photos. The database of potential Adelie penguin breeding habitat in Southwell et al. (2016a) was used to associate photos to a particular breeding site and structure how the photos are stored. The breeding site database has a unique identifying code of every site of potential breeding habitat in East Antarctica, and the sites are aggregated into sub-groups and then groups. The file structure in which the photos are stored has a combination of ‘group’ and ‘split-year breeding season’ at the top level (eg VES 2015-16 contains all photos in group VES (Vestfold Hills and islands) taken in the 2015-16 breeding season). Within each group-year folder are sub-folders for each breeding site where photos were taken (eg IS_72276 is Gardner Island in the VES group). If an overview photo was taken there are separate sub-folders for overview and detailed photos in the site sub-folder. These data also superseded an earlier dataset of 2009-2016 data - https://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/AAS_4088_Adelie_oblique_photos Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

An occupancy survey in December 2009-February 2010 and January 2011 found a total of 6 islands along the Knox coast had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The survey in 2009/10 was conducted from a fixed wing aircraft and oblique aerial photographs were taken of occupied sites. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to satellite images or the coastline shapefile from the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA, tile E157) and the boundaries of penguin colonies were digitised from the geo-referenced photos. Details for each island are: Merrit: Photographs taken on 1 February 2010 and geo-referenced to LIMA tile E157 Cape Nutt: Photographs taken on 5 January 2010 and geo-referenced to a Quickbird satellite image taken on 17 February 2011 Ivanoff Head: Photographs taken on 27 December 2009 and geo-referenced to LIMA tile E157 Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

The dataset comprises Adelie penguin colony boundaries at three sites in the vicinity of Stanton Island. Boundaries were derived from oblique aerial photographs taken in the Stanton Island group. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to AAT coastline polygon data and the boundaries of Adelie penguin colonies were digitised. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

Aerial photography (Linhof) of penguin colonies was acquired over the Windmill Islands (Eric Woehler). The penguin colonies were traced, then digitised (John Cox), and saved as DXF-files. Using the ArcView extension 'Register and Transform' (Tom Velthuis), The DXF-files were brought into a GIS and transformed to the appropriate islands. Data conforms to SCAR Feature Catalogue which can be searched (refer to link below).

Aerial photography (Linhof) of penguin colonies was acquired over the Svenner Islands (Eric Woehler). The penguin colonies were traced, then digitised (John Cox), and saved as DXF-files. Using the ArcView extension 'Register and Transform' (Tom Velthuis), the DXF-files were brought into a GIS and transformed to the appropriate islands.

Occupancy surveys in November 2008 (Southwell and Emmerson 2013) found a total of 31 Adelie penguin breeding sites off the Vestfold Hills. The boundaries of breeding sub-colonies at 26 of these sites were subsequently mapped from vertical aerial photographs A further two breeding sites (IS_72295 and McCallie Rocks_72205) were photographed obliquely from a helicopter using a hand-held camera on 10 January. Colony boundaries for 72295 were drawn and digitised by eye. Colony boundaries for 72295 were sketched onto a rough island polygon from the oblique photo without being rectified. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.