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.

An occupancy survey on 26 January 2012 found 1 island (70166) along the coast between 111 degrees 00'E - 111 degrees 10'E had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The survey was conducted from a fixed wing aircraft and oblique aerial photographs were taken of the occupied site. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to the coastline shapefile from the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA, tile E158) and the boundaries of penguin colonies were digitised from the geo-referenced photos with not intentional buffer. Note the quality of the aerial photos was poor and so the resultant boundary mapping will not be very accurate. Also in the Balaena Islands there is a historic record from the 50s of penguins nesting on Thompson Islet (70166). When aerial photos were taken of this island penguins could not be detected. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

Ecologists are increasingly turning to historical abundance data to understand past changes in animal abundance and more broadly the ecosystems in which animals occur. However, developing reliable ecological or management interpretations from temporal abundance data can be difficult because most population counts are subject to measurement or estimation error. There is now widespread recognition that counts of animal populations are often subject to detection bias. This recognition has led to the development of a general framework for abundance estimation that explicitly accounts for detection bias and its uncertainty, new methods for estimating detection bias, and calls for ecologists to estimate and account for bias and uncertainty when estimating animal abundance. While these methodological developments are now being increasingly accepted and used, there is a wealth of historical population count data in the literature that were collected before these developments. These historical abundance data may, in their original published form, have inherent unrecognised and therefore unaccounted biases and uncertainties that could confound reliable interpretation. Developing approaches to improve interpretation of historical data may therefore allow a more reliable assessment of extremely valuable long-term abundance data. This dataset contains details of over 200 historical estimates of Adelie penguin breeding populations across the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT) that have been published in the scientific literature. The details include attributes of the population count (date and year of count, count value, count object, count precision) and the published estimate of the breeding population derived from those attributes, expressed as the number of breeding pairs. In addition, the dataset contains revised population estimates that have been re-constructed using new estimation methods to account for detection bias as described in the associated publication. All population data used in this study were sourced from existing publications.

Adelie penguin foraging trip duration records for Bechervaise Island, Mawson since 1991-92. Data include average male and female foraging trip durations for both the guard and creche stages of the breeding season. Data based on records of tagged birds crossing the APMS for in and out crossings. Durations determined from difference between out and in crossings in conjunction with nest census records. Data included only for birds which were known to be foraging for a live chick. This work was completed as part of ASAC Project 2205, Adelie penguin research and monitoring in support of the CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring Project. The fields in this dataset are: Year trip duration (hours) Mean , standard error, count and standard deviation for male and female foraging trips during guard and creche stages of the breeding season.

Adelie colony boundaries at Bechervaise Island were mapped by Matthew Pauza on the 21 Dec 2016. Subcolonies were mapped by circumnavigating the perimeter on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Etrex30) to record the track. When mapping the perimeter of the subcolonies a buffer distance of approximately 2.5 meters was maintained between the mapper and the breeding birds. This buffer distance was reduced by .5m to between 2m in the final shapefiles. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

This file contains a log of observations collected in the Casey region between 1972 and 1988. Observations were made of Adelie penguins. The hard copy of the log has been archived by the Australian Antarctic Division library.

This dataset contains data on the habitats, distribution and numbers of Adelie Penguins (Pygoscellis adeliae) along the Vestfold Hills coast (including colonies on the mainland and offshore islands) during November 1973. The data are obtained from counts at the colonies and black and white photographs. Some aerial photographs were taken at Davis in 1981-82 and 1987-88, and will be compared to the results of this survey. The results are listed in the documentation. A total of 174178 26127 breeding pairs were counted. An increase in Adelie penguin population was found at most locations in East Antarctica. Data from this record has been incorporated into a larger Adelie penguin dataset described by the metadata record - Annual population counts at selected Adelie Penguin colonies within the AAT (SOE_seabird_candidate_sp_AP). It also falls under ASAC project 1219 (ASAC_1219).

An occupancy survey in January 2011 found a total of 14 islands/sites in Windmill group had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The boundaries of breeding colonies at 11 of the 14 islands were subsequently mapped for abundance surveys. Seven islands were mapped on the ground with GPS: Whitney Point, Blakeney Point, Shirley Island, Odbert Island, Berkley Island, Cameron Island and O'Connor Island between 10 December 2012 to 9 January 2013 ). The buffer distance was reduced to 1-2 m in the shapefiles created from the ground maps. Ground mapping involved circumnavigating the perimeter of sub-colonies on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Legend Cx or Vista C) to log the track taken. The person walking around the sub-colonies maintained a buffer distance of 2-3 m between themselves and the penguins at the sub-colony boundary to minimise disturbance. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

This file contains a log of observations collected in the Casey region between 1972 and 1986. Observations were made of Adelie penguin movements on Shirley Island. The hard copy of the log has been archived by the Australian Antarctic Division library.

Metadata record for data from ASAC Project 106 See the link below for public details on this project. From the abstracts of some of the referenced papers: This paper reports the results of the first aerial photographic survey of Adelie penguin colonies in the Prydz Bay region. The area surveyed extended from the northern Vestfold Hills to the Publications Ice Shelf. More than 325,000 pairs of Adelie penguins were estimated to be breeding in this region in 1981/82. The great majority of breeding Adelie penguins occurred in the northern half of the region surveyed, in the Vestfold hills and Rauer Islands, where most colonies were located. This is probably due to the typical pattern of summer sea-ice dispersal, which usually results in sea-ice leaving the northern areas of the coast first. Prydz Bay supports nine seabird species that breed on the Princess Elizabeth Land coast: two penguins, six Procellariiformes and one skua. Information on their diet is reviewed. Apart from the scavenging South Polar Skua Catharacta maccormicki and Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus, three diet types were distinguished. First, the Emperor Penguin Aptenodytes forsteri ate almost exclusively fish; secondly the Adelie Penguin Pygoscelis adeliae, Cape Petrel Daption capense, and Wilson's Storm Petrel Oceanites oceanicus consumed at least 60% euphausiid, the remainder largely fish; and thirdly, a diet of greater than 60% fish, the rest euphausiids, was taken by the Southern Fulmar Fulmarus glacialoides, Antarctic Petrel Thalassoica antarctica and Snow Petrel Pagodroma nivea. Seasonal fluctuation in composition of Adelie Penguin, Cape Petrel and Southern Fulmar diet suggested either fluctuating foraging ranges or movement of Euphausia superba inshore during summer months. Annual fluctuation in diet composition was correlated with seabird reproductive success. When E. crystallorophias dominated the euphausiid component of Adelie Penguin diet, reproductive success was high; when E. superba was scarce in Prydz Bay, Antarctic Petrel and Southern Fulmar productivity was low. Breeding phenology, success and nest attendance of Antarctic Petrels Thalassoica antarctica and Southern Fulmars Fulmarus glacialoides at the Rauer Group, East Antarctica, are discussed. Most data were collected on Hop Island in January and February 1988, and from December 1988 to March 1989. Observations extended from the late stages of incubation to post-guard or fledging periods. Some annual breeding indices collected from 1983 onwards at census sites are compared with meteorological data and the extent of fast ice for the nearby Davis Station. Both species had a restricted hatching period, reflecting a brief and synchronised egg-laying period, reflecting a brief and synchronised egg-laying period, typical of other southern fulmarine petrels. Antarctic Petrel chicks hatched from 4 January (1989) and c. 90% appeared by 16 January (both years). Southern Fulmar hatching began on 21 January (1988) and almost all chicks appeared by 6 February (both years). Adult attendance at nests declined with increasing chick age. For Antarctic Petrels, this was most marked at about 11 days; no chicks had continuously attendant adults after 24 days, although adults returned to feed them. Incubation shifts following hatching and the post-guard period started, on average, 13 days after hatching. Egg and chick losses varied between years and sites. The South Polar Skua Catharacta maccormicki was apparently involved in the majority of losses. Nest sites of both species resemble those elsewhere: Southern Fulmars may require steeper sites, allowing a fall away from colonies. Antarctic Petrels are less affected by accumulation of snow or ice and shelter from katabatic winds may be important. Although weather may modify breeding success locally, annual success must depend on the ability of parents to produce eggs and feed chicks: this may be moderated by the extent and persistence of pack ice. Annual chick productivity and breeding success, recorded at four Adelie penguin, Pygoscelis adeliae, colonies at Magnetic Island in eastern Prydz Bay, are presented for the seven breeding seasons 1981/82 to 1987/88. The adult breeding population remained relatively stable during the first 4 years of the study, and increased in hte last 2 years. Substantial annual variation in breeding success occurred over the study period, ranging between an estimated 0.69 and 1.33 chicks surviving until late creche stage per nest for seasons 1985/86 and 1982/83 respectively. Annual patterns of chick productivity in southern fulmar, Fulmarus glacialoides, and Antarctic petrel, Thalassoica antarctica, populations within Prydz Bay were synchronous with those of Adelie penguins. In the years of highest and lowest reproductive performance, prey abundance within the likely foraging areas was correspondingly high and low. Reproductive performance was greatest in years when fast-ice breakout occurred before the end of December (1981/82, 1982/83. 1986/87 and 1987/88) and lowest when the breakout was after (1983/84, 1984/85 and 1985/86) and pack-ice cover persisted within the foraging range of the birds during the chick-rearing period.