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Hello all,
A week on Lord Howe Island over the New Year yielded some good
birds.
Most interesting was a Whiskered Tern, for which I can find no
previous record.
I picked up a dead specimen on 29/12/99 on the golf course -
seemed to have
been dead for a week or two from the state
of decomposition. Mr Clive Wilson
reported to me that the bird had been seen
alive around the golf course from
around 3 weeks up to 2 weeks before I
found the dead bird. The report was
from Mr Bill Retmock of Mary Challis
Cottages.
Other birds included agroup of 6 tattlers, 2 of which I
believe to have been
'Wandering', with the others indeterminate.
Also 1 Goldfinch (near the power station)
1 Shining Bronze-Cuckoo (at North Bay)
1 Lesser Sand Plover (near the swampy ground at the eastern
end of the airstrip)
3 Great Cormorants - on the wreck at North Bay. One bird was
an immature, but
seemed paler on breast/belly than young birds I have seen here
(with a broad
speckly-brown band across the upper
breast). Are immature NZ birds like this?
There were still no Starlings around - they seem
now to have definitely disappeared
from the
island.
One interesting point to note is that the Woodhens have
discovered a rich treasure-trove
of food on the golf course. They are ripping up large areas of
grass on fairways and
short rough with their bills, and the golfers will soon be getting very twitchy I think.
Especially when the birds move to the greens! One golfing
couple saw 10 birds in the open
during a 9-hole circuit. I saw seven myself on a short
visit.
Richard
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