G'day everyone,
This afternoon I decided that the only way to 'come down' from the fantastic
seawatches off Maroubra over the past 2 days was to head out to my local patch
- Nobby's Head, Newcastle. I was in for a treat.
What I saw was a humongous flock of Fluttering Shearwaters that stretched for
well over 2km from about 500m off the entrance of the harbour south to Groper
Rock (southern end of Nobby's Beach). To get an idea of how many birds were in
the flock, check the photos on the following link (and use the "next" feature
to scroll through the 4 images):
http://s178.photobucket.com/albums/w248/Brewerbackpacker/Flutterings/?action=view¤t=Fluttering1.jpg
What can be seen in the aggregate of these 4 images represents about 20% of the
total flock. I know the images aren't fantastic but if you enlarge them by
clicking on the image you can get an appreciation of the numbers of birds
(remembering each photo shows about 1/20th of the total flock). From making
counts on-the-ground combined with counts off the various photos I took I am
estimating that there must have been close to 10,000 birds. I'd be interested
to hear people's opinions on this, given that the only references I can find to
population size is "100,000 pairs" (Brooke and Cox) and "more than 100,000
birds" (Birdlife International), who also state that flocks of greater than
20,000 birds have been recorded. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has
seen such extensive flocks of Fluttering Shearwaters. Doubtless some birds were
Hutton's, though I was only able to identify a single bird that I could
confidently say was a Hutton's.
Also present were a few Wedge-tailed Shearwaters and 2 Black-browed Albatross.
There were schools of (presumably) Australian Salmon feeding and breaking the
surface in one area just off Big Ben Rocks and hawking around these were Silver
Gulls, Crested Terns and a total of 28 White-fronted Terns (as well as a few
Gannets). A pair of Gull-billed Terns were seen hawking over the sand dunes.
Great to see so much wildlife activity off our industrial port city. What a
weekend for seawatching! Incidentally, the next organised Hunter Seawatch will
take place next Sunday at 2pm, Fort Drive, Nobby's.
Mick Roderick
Win a MacBook Air or iPod touch with Yahoo!7.
http://au.docs.yahoo.com/homepageset
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