South coast notes (5)

[Alan Cowan <>]

We saw a very juvenile-plumaged Sea Eagle take a Short-Tailed Shearwater from the sea 10 days ago at Broulee Beach. We have visited Broulee for many years and I have examined hundreds of beach-wrecked carcases. They have all been Short-Tailed Shearwaters except for one Fluttering SW and one White-Faced Storm-Petrel. Sooty SW tend to forage a lot further south: they are essentially NZ breeders and I have seen them foraging in Antarctic waters. Simpson & Day have good bill diagrams. The day we saw the incident above we observed dozens of S-T SWs close inshore and we found several carcases. We also found one carcase  4 weeks earlier.

Alan Cowan

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 3:35 PM, Geoffrey Dabb <> wrote:

At Green Cape last week, a young sea-eagle flying shorewards from somewhere well out to sea.  The main point of interest was the cargo, which was certainly bird rather than fish.  I suppose the most likely object was a dead or exhausted shearwater plucked from the surface.  In their emaciated condition more than one of these would be needed for a meal for a hungry sea-eagle, but there is no shortage according to recent reports.