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Great Frigatebird | Fregata minor
Grote fregatvogel | Rabihorcado Grande
Great Frigatebird is the seabird with the lowest wing loading of any bird in the world: on wings spanning more than two metres tip to tip, it can soar over the ocean for days or even weeks without ever touching the water. Within this the guide area it breeds only on the uninhabited islands of northwestern Hawaii, but it can be seen there year-round, including over the inhabited main islands.
Voice
At the colony, courtship brings a hollow drumming from the male beating his bill against his inflated, bright red throat pouch, along with harsh chattering and bill-rattling when pairs and parents with chicks greet each other. During the throat-pouch display the male adds a long, warbling call, swinging his head from side to side and shaking his wings to attract passing females. Away from the colony, in flight over the sea, Great Frigatebird is almost always silent.
Recording: AUDEVARD Aurélien — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Tuamotus Islands, The Tuamotu and Gambier Islands, France · xeno-canto
Identification
The male is entirely black with a greenish sheen on the scapular patch and carries a bright red, inflatable throat pouch during courtship. The female is likewise mostly black but has a white throat and breast and a red eye-ring; she is somewhat larger and heavier than the male. The juvenile has a rust-tinged white head, neck and breast, which only over several years, through a series of changing intermediate plumages, gives way to the adult plumage. In flight the species is distinctive: long, narrow, angled wings with a distinct bend, a deeply forked tail often pinched to a point, and a silhouette that from a distance recalls the letter 'M'.
Confusion species
Within this area, Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens) is the only real source of confusion; it breeds in Florida and is common along the Gulf Coast and, as an adult male, is almost indistinguishable from Great Frigatebird. The female Magnificent Frigatebird, however, has an entirely black throat against the white throat of the female Great Frigatebird, and lacks the red eye-ring. Juveniles of the two species are the most similar and are often identified only by the colour of the head patch and the shape of the dark patch under the wing. Within the guide area the two species scarcely overlap, since Great Frigatebird remains almost entirely confined to Hawaii.
Habitat
Great Frigatebird nests in low shrubs and on rock ledges on uninhabited islands and atolls, where it faces no predators of its own but depends on vegetation able to support its nest. At sea it never hunts by diving into the water or landing on it — its plumage is not sufficiently waterproof and it cannot take off from the water's surface — but catches flying fish and squid in flight, or snatches them from the surface without ever getting wet itself. Around the inhabited islands of Hawaii it also uses the airspace over cliffs and coastlines to soar on thermals.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by the USNVC — the vegetation classification of the United States and Canada — and CMECS for sea and coast.
Range and movements
Great Frigatebird breeds in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, with the largest colony on Nihoa and smaller colonies scattered through the rest of the island chain; on the inhabited main islands a single breeding record is known, on the islet of Mokumanu off Oʻahu. Outside the breeding season, mainly young birds wander widely across the Pacific — satellite tracking has shown they can cover thousands of kilometres over open ocean in the process — but the core of the Hawaiian population remains in the waters around the archipelago year-round. Elsewhere within the guide area the species is a rare vagrant, almost always after tropical storms.
- Resident
Where and when to look
Kilauea Point on Kauaʻi is the most reliable place to see the species: several birds are almost always circling above the point, and the nearby islet of Mokuʻaeʻae serves as a regular roost. Watch for the characteristic M-shape in flight and, on the breeding islands themselves, the inflated red throat pouch of displaying males.
Conservation
The Hawaiian breeding population, estimated at several thousand pairs, has been stable to increasing since the Second World War, partly because former military land on the northwestern islands has grown back over. Worldwide the species is listed as Least Concern (LC), but an isolated subspecies on the Brazilian island of Trindade, in the South Atlantic, is critically endangered due to a severely shrunken breeding range. Ocean plastic and entanglement in fishing gear are the main risks for the Hawaiian birds.
Scientific name
Fregata minor | (Gmelin, 1789)
Johann Friedrich Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Pelecanus minor, in the pelican genus; because it has since been placed in another genus, author and year stand in parentheses. The genus Fregata is named after the frigate, a fast, manoeuvrable sailing ship, after the swift and agile flight of these birds. minor is Latin for 'smaller', although the species is not clearly smaller than most of its relatives; Gmelin was translating the name 'lesser frigate pelican' from John Latham's 1785 description, on which his own was based. No fixed type locality exists; later authors successively restricted it to the eastern Indian Ocean and finally to Christmas Island.