Fifteen COG members people made the short trek down from Canberra to
Eden on the southern NSW coast for a weekend of pelagic birding aboard the
Connemara with skipper Richard Buckingham. We departed both mornings at 6am
with the aim of getting out to the shelf edge as early as possible.
Observers (Saturday): Dan Mantle, Anthony Overs, Barbara
Allen, Dianne Frazier, Lindsay Hansch, Sandra Henderson, Tobias Hayashi, Sue
Lashko, Julian Robinson and Alastair Smith.
Observers (Sunday): Dan Mantle, Anthony Overs, Sandra
Henderson, Tobias Hayashi, Julienne Kamprad, Sybilla Kovacs, Cassandra Morrow,
Margaret Leggoe, Alastair Smith, and Alan Thomas.
Highlights:
The weekend was notable for a moderate number of Cookilaria
petrel sightings. These birds along with the vast majority of shearwaters were
moving south and gave reasonable views in the light winds, thus allowing all on
board to see Mottled (3 on Sat/5 on Sun) and Cook’s Petrels (1 on Sat/1 on Sun)
both days. Or I should say probable Cook’s Petrels – everything I saw seemed to
fit with Cook’s rather than Pycroft’s Petrel on both days but obviously these are notoriously difficult birds to be 100% sure on the identification. Tobias Hayashi got
good photos of these birds but so far I have only seen these images on his
camera. We will get to look at these images in the next few days. Certainly both birds
had well developed but restricted ear covert patches that were clearly distinct
from paler grey nape and crown and the Saturday bird had a long, thin, clearly
defined supercilium (not easy to be sure on the Sunday bird). Both birds looked
relatively long billed (the Sunday
bird was also relatively thick-billed). In flight, I thought both birds were long winged but I am not willing to
comment on tail length. I have found that I struggle to easily pick any
differences in tail length on photos of known birds without actually measuring them.
We also had good views of a single White-chinned Petrel at
the berley point each day and reasonable numbers of Great-winged (largely or
all Grey-faced) and Providence Petrels. The Humpbacks also put on a great show,
particularly on Sunday with prolonged flipper and tail slapping and lots of
breaching (including one large whale unexpectedly breaching within 50m of the
boat – spectacular!).
COG Eden pelagics – Saturday & Sunday October 22rd &
23rd 2011
Weather (Saturday): Overcast with light 5 knot northerlies
for most of the day with virtually no swell and only very low waves. Sea
surface temperatures were 15C close to shore rising to 18.5C at the shelf edge.
Weather (Sunday): Light 5-10 knot north-easterlies, starting
overcast but soon clearing to a bright day with only a slight swell (1m) and
low waves (0.5-1m). Similar water temperatures to Saturday.
Saturday berley point – 37 03S 150 23E (280-310 fathoms)
Sunday berley point – 36 58S 150 20E (190-210 fathoms)
List of birds (Saturday total/Sunday total):
Black-browed Albatross 8/10
(all close birds were melanophris)
Yellow-nosed Albatross 2/0
Shy Albatross 180+/20+
(all cauta or cauta/steadi)
Wandering Albatross 4/2
(one gibsoni, rest not split but possibly all gibsoni)
Fluttering Shearwater 20/100+
Hutton’s Shearwater 40/0
Fluttering/Hutton’s Shearwater 1000+/200+
Short-tailed Shearwater 500+/500+
Sooty Shearwater 1/0
Wedge-tailed Shearwater 300+/200+
White-faced Storm-petrel 1/0
Wilson’s Storm-Petrel 20+/20+
Great-winged Petrel 2/30+
(most or all gouldi)
Providence Petrel 6/10+
Cape Petrel 10+/1
Mottled Petrel 3/5
Cook’s Petrel 1/1
Unidentified Cookilaria 0/2
(probably both distant Mottled Petrels)
White-chinned Petrel 1/1
Northern Giant Petrel 1/1
Giant Petrel sp. 0/1
Arctic Jaeger 1/2
(all nearshore)
Australian Gannet
Black-faced Cormorant 2/1
Little Black Cormorant 2/10
(10 birds flew past in formation at 190 fathom mark)
Great Cormorant 2/0
Little Pied Cormorant 1/0
Little Penguin 6/0
Crested Tern
Pacific Gull 2/2
Silver Gull
Cuckoo sp. (probably Pallid) 1/0
Eastern Reef Egret 0/1
Fish & Mammals:
Sunfish sp. 0/1
Mako Shark sp. 0/1
Australian Fur Seal 10+/10+
Common Dolphin 50+/0
Bottlenose Dolphin sp 40/0
Humpback Whale 6/12
Southern Right Whale 1/0
