Dear birding Ausers
or at least those who are interested.
October 1968 was considered a bad year for Short-tailed Shearwater wrecks on
the central NSW coast. It was also my first experience of a large wreck. I
saw some alive at sea but picked up 181 (18.10.1968) at Norah Head, 206
(28.10.1968) from Norah Head and 135 (8.2.1969) from Catherine Hill Bay.
Of the ones I sexed and weighed 19 were males and 27 were females and
weights varied from 500 to 630 g. Several of us wrote short notes on this
wreck in Hunter Natural History (1969) but my copies are in Melbourne - so
cannot give more detail at the moment.
If you want lots of shearwater wrecks I can recommend joining the OSNZ Beach
Patrol scheme and walking Wellington West, and Far North beaches where of
course Sooty Shearwaters and Bullers Shearwaters usually outnumber
Short-tails as far as wrecks are concerned. However if you are going to NZ
and want to see live shearwaters I can recommend a visit to the Huttons
Shearwater colonies at the snow line on the Kaikoura Ranges in the South
Island. If you get there at sunset you will have to be patient as they will
not arrive until 1145 - takes the breeding adults a while to reach that
altitude.
Yes we still have a lot to learn about birds in general and seabirds in
particular
But have a good time learning
Mike
--
Dr Mike Tarburton
Assoc Prof Biology
Pacific Adventist University
PMB Boroko
Papua New Guinea
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