1. Five fledging sea eagles left their nests in western Scotland this summer, so they brought to 34 the number of wild birds successfully raised since transplants from Norway began in 1975.

2. "On Thursday August 31st the UN’s Security Council passed a resolution that authorizes 17,300 peacekeepers and a few thousand civilian police to be deployed in Darfur"

or

3. "On Thursday August 31st the UN’s Security Council passed a resolution by which they authorized 17,300 peacekeepers and a few thousand civilian police to be deployed in Darfur"

Function: Present participle for a separate clause with the same subject (or in the case 2. object adverbial sentence)

Gerund is a noun (Dancing is fun).

Swagatalakshmi wrote:

I'm sorry but I still didn't get it. Can you explain the relationship between "Five fledging sea eagles left their nests in western Scotland this summer" and "bringing to 34 the number of wild birds successfully raised since transplants from Norway began in 1975." The partciple "bringing" modifies which noun ?

It does not modify anything it is replacing the beginning of another sentence that has the same subject and is describing the action that is happening at the same time or is a consequence of the action previously mentioned

• I was running 20 km that day so I reached almost 100 km that week.
• I was running 20 km that day reaching almost 100 km that week.

• He won 5 games thus he won the gold medal.
• He won 5 games winning the gold medal.

Hi,

Finally the "adverbial participle" was mentioned in this forum.

The "participle" phrase functions as an adverb is often said by teachers in China, and I'd been wondering why those grammar knowledge links provided by IK don't include that.

I strongly underline as well that participle does not modify anything here. The participle is just a shorthand notation for another sentence, thus it adds more information that is related to previous sentence, but it does not modify it. The function of participle does not have to be to modify anything.

In the next example

Swimming through the mud, we had to continue our journey.

The participle, swimming, could be said to have adverbial function (adverbial participle), because it says how we continued our journey: by swimming. However

I jumped into the empty pool and I hit my head very hard.

I jumped into the empty pool hitting my head very hard.

jump and hit are two separate actions certainly connected but they do not modify each other I any sense.