birding-aus

Grey and Sooty Terns in Sydney

To: <>, <>
Subject: Grey and Sooty Terns in Sydney
From: "Alan Leishman" <>
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 13:26:31 +1100
Dion,

On Saturday 3.2.2001 there were hundreds of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters feeding 
inside Sydney Heads and adjacent to Dobroyd Point. They were easily observed 
from the Manly Ferry.



Alan Leishman,
Plant Sciences,
Royal Botanic Gardens,
Mrs Macquaries Road,
Sydney, NSW 2565
Tel: (02) 9231 8166
 message is intended for the addressee named 
and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended 
recipient, please delete it and notify the sender. Views expressed in this 
message are those of the individual sender, and are not necessarily the views 
of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust.


>>> "Dion Hobcroft" <> 02/05/01 12:19pm >>>
On Saturday 3.2.01 the strong to gale force north east winds provided some
land based tropical seabirding in Sydney.

Two juvenile Sooty Terns were taken into care at Taronga Zoo brought in from
Bondi. David Mitford found an exhausted adult with a broken leg at Mistral
Point, Maroubra. He had seen up to 8 Sooty Terns, a Long-tailed Jaeger and
two Buller's Shearwaters on an afternoon seawatch from this location on
2.2.01.

I arranged to meet him after work and collect the tern. We seawatched from
Mistral Point. David had seen a couple more Sooty Terns including a juvenile
sitting on the rocks unfortunately flushed by kids 10 minutes before I
arrived.

>From 1540-1900 we recorded

Grey Tern: single beating into wind first sighted by DM at 1735. It was
several hundred metres offshore and took me along time to locate but it kept
getting pushed towards us. When I finally picked it up in the scope it was
quickly identified as a Grey Tern by its diminutive size and uniformally
pale blue grey upperparts and head and paler appearing underparts. It was
watched for about five minutes until it turned into the wind and was quickly
lost against the sea. This was a new bird for David and a County tick for
me.

Sooty Tern: an adult and juvenile flew by very close in at 1710 and we saw
two distant adults shortly after.

Long-tailed Jaeger: adult type molting into summer plumage complete with two
long central tail streamers. The tern like flight, blue grey upperparts and
prominent white outer primary shaft and reasonably close distance allowed us
to be certain of this bird. We had another possible sitting on the water
being lost to view in the heavy swell.

Also seen Flesh-footed Shearwater (1), Sooty Shearwater (1), Short-tailed
Shearwater (2), Wedge-tailed Shearwater (500-1000), Aust Gannet (1 per DM),
Little Black Cormorant (1), Pomarine Jaeger (2), Arctic Jaeger (3), Silver
Gull and Crested Tern.

On the previous Saturday pelagic (27.1.01) off Wollongong we had logged
30-40 Sooty Terns, 1 Long-tailed Jaeger and 1 Tahiti Petrel.

There should be an excellent chance for tropical seabirds on this Saturday's
pelagic off Sydney.

Good birding

Dion

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 


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU