Hello Pelagic Persons,
I am not a seabird 'pathetic' but I must admit that Brent Stephenson's
excellent Diomedea cauta sp.
photos, no doubt taken with his recently acquired Canon EOS D60 digital SLR
camera (sigh!), had me
immediately reaching for my limited collection of seabird books.
The "White-capped Albatross" has one diagnostic characteristic that sets it
apart from all other
albatrosses and guarantees you are looking at one of the trio of Diomedea cauta
sub-species. Just to
make it more interesting I will leave it up to the reader to check that out.
The trio consists of:
Shy Albatross, Diomedea cauta cauta
Salvin's Albatross, D. c. salvini
Chatham Island Albatross, D. c. eremita
As with so many similar situations, it would appear to a novice that it is
relatively easy to
separate Shy from Chatham but not so easy to separate Shy from Salvin's or
Salvin's from Chatham.
Unless you are an expert, in which case everything is
easy......joke!.....joke!....joke!
Seriously,
One of my reference books is The National Photographic Index of Australian
Wildlife volume: "The
Seabirds of Australia" published by Angus and Robinson in 1986.
Obviously this is a book of photographs with some text.
The entry for "Shy Albatross" starts on page 124 and provides a number of
photographs of this
species.
Unfortunately, although the text refers to the three sub-species most of the
photos do not identify
which sub-species is being portrayed.
As most of the photos were (allegedly) taken on Albatross Is, Tasmania, I
assume that these photos
are of D. c. cauta.
One photo taken on The Snares NZ is labelled sub-species salvini which looks to
be correct.
However, the full-page shot on page 126 labelled 'immature' and taken on
Albatross Is, Tasmania
looks
a little sus to my unpracticed eye.
Is there a seabird expert out there who has a copy of this book and who can
tell me which
sub-species this is?
Is it in fact, D. c. eremita (Chatham Is Albatross)?
There appears that there is no other photo showing this sub-species.
Is it likely that Chatham Is Albatross frequents Tasmanian islands?
And,
What seabird reference books would the 'experts' recommend to someone on a
limited budget?
Note: I have:
Harrison's "Seabirds" and his "Photographic Guide" as well as the above
mentioned Australian
publication;
and "Southern Albatrosses and Petrels" by Harper and Kinsky;
as well as HANZAB.
Cheers
Bob Inglis
Woody Point
queensland
Australia
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
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