Hi Paul,
Last week tens of thousands of Short-tailed Shearwaters passed south along
the Sydney coast (I made one half hour count of 13,000), and on Saturday a
walk along Maroubra Beach, which is only 900 metres long, produced 149
beachcast Short-tails. This is about five times the biggest count of last
year. I'm not sure to what extent this years mortality is higher than
normal. I can say, though, that the main visible migration in the previous
five springs along this stretch of coast was in November or early December,
so it appears that something at least a little out of the ordinary is
happening this year. Also, I'm not sure whether the birds are relatively
late adults, relatively early immatures, or a mixture. There have, by the
way, been no Wedge-tails wahed up, though there was a single Fairy Prion.
Rod Gardner
>We've been receiving reports for a month of large numbers of beach washed
>shearwaters. It started with Wedge-tailed in northern New South Wales where
>'thousands' we found beached at Minniewater. Later thousands at Seal Rocks -
>Tea Gardens and last week Palm Beach. Now we're told large numbers of
>Short-tailed have come ashore around Kempsey.
>
>This doesn't bode well for NSW shearwaters. Have any birdwatchers come
>across large numbers of beached birds in the last month? Is NSWNPWS already
>looking at this?
>
>
>Paul Andrew
>Curator
>Taronga Zoo
>PO Box 20
>Sydney 2088
>tel:612-99784724
>fax: 612-99784613
>
>
>Birding-Aus is on the Web at
>www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
>"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
>to
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
