birding-aus

Shy Albatross vs White-capped Albatross

To: Jeff Davies <>, 'Jeremy O'Wheel' <>
Subject: Shy Albatross vs White-capped Albatross
From: Nikolas Haass <>
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 20:15:01 -0700 (PDT)
Hi Jeremy & Jeff,


Me to. In addition to the primary patterns of both adult and young birds, I 
would also be very interested in the head and neck colour of the fledglings of 
each taxon.


Cheers,

Nikolas

 
----------------
Nikolas Haass

Sydney, NSW


________________________________
 From: Jeff Davies <>
To: 'Jeremy O'Wheel' <> 
Cc: 'Nikolas Haass' <>; 'birding-aus' 
<> 
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 12:18 PM
Subject: RE: [Birding-Aus] Shy Albatross vs White-capped Albatross
 

G’day Jeremy,
 
I would be very keen to see any photos you get and to swap notes on this 
subject.
 
Cheers Jeff.
 
 
From:  On Behalf Of Jeremy O'Wheel
Sent: Wednesday, 27 June 2012 12:06 PM
To: Jeff Davies
Cc: Nikolas Haass; birding-aus
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Shy Albatross vs White-capped Albatross
 
Ok cool.  I only had 2 photos of birds that I could be confident were T. steadi 
(because they were breeding at Auckland Island) - so it's probably good to note 
that limitation with my assessment (Thanks to Bill Abbott for the photos!).  I 
have some vague plans of visiting the breeding islands for both species at some 
point in the next few years, so if that happens, or if anybody else is visiting 
either, it would be great to get a large number of photos of many birds to do a 
more robust comparison.  

Thanks,

Jeremy
On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Jeff Davies <> wrote:
Nikolas is correct, 
 
when the outer most primary is without a white inner web and entirely dark it 
shows up best in flight as a right angled step. But I can find no evidence that 
it is exclusively a steadi feature or that they always show it. Would have been 
handy if it worked but the feature doesn’t work as far as I can tell.
 
Cheers Jeff.
 
 
 
 
From:Nikolas Haass  
Sent: Wednesday, 27 June 2012 9:31 AM
To: Jeremy O'Wheel; Jeff Davies
Cc: birding-aus

Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Shy Albatross vs White-capped Albatross
 
Hi Jeremy, Jeff et al.,
 
I second the point about the yellow base of the culminicorn in cauta.
 
I also use the underprimary pattern - i.e. the 'step' in p8-p10 caused by more 
solid dark grey on both webs - to ID a 'possible steadi', as opposed to the 
throughout 'comb'-patterned underprimaries for a 'possible cauta' (caused by 
dark grey outer webs and white inner webs). However, there seems to be much 
variation and there seems to be no robust evidence at all at this point (to my 
knowledge there is still nor peer-reviewed paper on this field mark).
I disagree that this pattern is more obvious when the wing is spread. I think 
the opposite: When the wing is 'overly' spread all primaries appear bicoloured 
- even in a Salvin's Albatross, which normally should have a solid dark wingtip 
(caused by all grey visible undersides of the primaries).
 
Cheers,
 
Nikolas
 
----------------
Nikolas Haass

Sydney, NSW

________________________________

From:Jeremy O'Wheel <>
To: Jeff Davies <> 
Cc: birding-aus <> 
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 8:43 AM
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Shy Albatross vs White-capped Albatross

Thanks everyone for replies, especially those that sent photos - they were
very helpful.

My opinion, which is admittedly still based on very limited evidence is
this;

T. cauta (Tasmanian Shy) has a yellow dot at the base of its beak when
breeding (or at some point during its life), but doesn't always have this -
so if you see a bird with this mark, I'd be happy to call it T. cauta, but
if it doesn't have it, it still could be.

T. steadi never has the yellow dot, but does have black leading underwing
primaries (probably P8-10) - however the colour of the other primaries in
both species does vary a bit, so you can get birds with those 3 primaries
black, and the rest white, or you can get ones where the difference between
those 3 and the others is almost negligible - however if they're black,
it's T. steadi.  It's also more difficult to spot this difference with
birds in flight, than when they spread their feathers a little landing and
taking off.  So ideally, to separate the species when they don't have a
yellow dot, you need a high quality photo of the underside of the primaries
landing or taking off.

However, I should add that this conclusion is based on very few photos, and
one stuffed bird, (as well as some anecdotes), so I'm definitely open to
more robust evidence.

regards,

Jeremy O'Wheel



On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 11:21 PM, Jeff Davies <>wrote:

> G'day Jeremy,
>
> I have also been looking at the under-wing issue between these two for the
> last couple of years and have found equal variation of blackness in the
> under-primaries for both. The bill colour seems to be a good feature
> however. I will look closer at these two birds next year but would be very
> interested to hear any other insights into this pair you may uncover
> yourself.
>
> Cheers Jeff.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: 
>  On Behalf Of Jeremy
> O'Wheel
> Sent: Friday, 22 June 2012 3:10 PM
> To: birding-aus
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] Shy Albatross vs White-capped Albatross
>
> G'day all,
>
> Recently I've been having some discussion about the differences between the
> Tasmanian Shy Albatross - T. cauta - and the New Zealand White-capped
> Albatross - T. steadi (or T. cauta cauta/steadi depending on your
> taxonomy).
> Various sources seem to indicate that breeding T. cauta have a yellow spot
> at the upper base of the beak, while T. steadi never have this yellow dot.
> It has also been suggested that T. steadi has black primaries
> 8,9,10 while on T. cauta they are black and white.
>
> I was wondering if anybody know more about the differences, especially
> differences that can be identified in the field, or can confirm or deny the
> differences I've suggested?  I was also wondering if anybody have photos of
> either species/spp. nesting at their various locations with the underwings
> visible (esp. P8-10)?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeremy O'Wheel
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