birding-aus

birding-aus Halcyon Daze

To: "Birding-aus" <>
Subject: birding-aus Halcyon Daze
From: "Glenn Holmes" <>
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 17:08:47 +1000
'Halcyon days' were 14 days of calm weather when the Halcyon nested at sea about the winter solstice.  Weather good for weak stomachs like mine, but diabolical for the obsessive compulsives that keen seabirders must be.
 
I can empathise with Barbara Jones and all other organisers about the problems associated with running pelagics.  I hope all visitors appreciate the effort behind the scenes to establish these on a regular basis.  I organised four trips from Southport in the early 90s as an alternative to the tedious bay crossings that were part of the trips from Manly [Brisbane not Sydney].  Three of these four were cancelled by weather.  After migrating to north Queensland, I then missed all of the trips subsequently organised from there by Paul Walbridge with the Seaworld boat !!
 
Even so, I was relieved that these trips did not produce much that was different from my Coffs Harbour daze in 1974- 77, when I hitched about 90 times on local fishing boats.  How I wish I'd been part of a group then, with extra eyes to maximise the results.  I must admit however, that many of the fishermen had acute sight [despite their road-map eyes] that was often helpful.
 
A group would also have helped to substantiate my observations.  It may seem amusing now, but in many quarters it was tantamount to heresy to report Long-tailed Jaeger, Tahiti Petrel, Providence Petrel, Buller's Albatross & Shearwater, White-bellied Storm-Petrel and Northern Giant-Petrel.
 
At least there was less argument with the corpses that I collected from beaches.  My very first find was a Grey Ternlet at Long Reef in 1967, a bird mentioned only in the back of my 1963 What Bird Is That ? in two stark lines...' two records from near Sydney ' .  Invigorated by beginner's luck and the gift of a reference collection of prion heads from Doug Gibson, I embarked on a decade of beachwalking in NSW that mystified most normal people.  In that time I must have found about 15000 dead birds.  At 48, the skin lesions on my hands and varicose veins in one leg testify to my obsessiveness.
 
As you can see, tubenose fanatics are likely to have grown up in peculiar circumstances.  If they are less than perfect on your next pelagic, put it down to a disturbed childhood. 
 
Glenn Holmes
PO Box 1246 Atherton
Qld 4883
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