Hi Peter, and others,
With regards to the behaviour of seabirds in response to boats. In New
Zealand great-winged petrels (grey-faced pets) often show little
interest in boats, or make slight deviations towards the boat, but very
rarely do they come in and land. In saying that, we did have them
coming right in and landing behind the boat on the last Tolaga Bay
pelagic, and have seen them occasionally do it off Kaikoura as well.
The number of soft-plumaged petrel numbers off of Port Fairy recently
may have been unprecedented as some mentioned. They have been rarely
recorded off the NZ mainland. However, last year myself and Sav Saville
saw small numbers (est 6-7 one day, 2+ another day, 1 flying round
lights at a football stadium!!) off of the west coast of the North
Island near Palmerston North. This was 27-30 May last year, around the
same time seasonally as the recent sightings. At the time the
suggestion was that the very strong south-westerlies we had been having
had pushed them into our part of the coast. Maybe similar conditions
had been occurring off of the Australian coast just before these
sightings?
Regards,
Brent
Brent Stephenson
Eco-Vista: Photography & Research + Wrybill Birding Tours, NZ
email
http://www.eco-vista.com and http://www.wrybill-tours.com
|The Great-winged Petrels that occur for most of the year on the east
coast
|are P. macroptera gouldi (NZ breeders) and as Frank observes often
attend
|fishing vessels closely. In the winter months the nominate P. m.
|macrpotera occurs in much smaller numbers in the Tasman Sea and are
boat
|shy to the point that we have had to respond tactically to identify
them.
|I presume that the birds observed offshore from Perth are the latter so
in
|fact there is not a behavioural difference. Any comments from VIC or
TAS
|where both would occur?
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