Greetings,
Thanks to an email from John Cox regarding my recent posting about
Diving-Petrels off the beach at Glenelg, SA in which he pointed out that
they
were Fluttering Shearwaters, I've been re-reading some HANZAB info.
I misread a sentence in Vol 1 page 719 which says
"Flight whirring, direct, rarely gliding and quite unlike that of other
procellariiformes;
can dive straight into water from flight without settling first."
I must have missed the semi-colon after the word procellariiformes which
meant
that I decided that diving into water from flight was diagnostic of
Diving-Petrels,
thereby ending what should have been more searching on my part as to the
birds'
identity.
Thanks for that John.
In fact, had I read the account in HANZAB Vol 1 p 650 of Fluttering
Shearwater,
I would have found a very accurate description of what I was seeing on
Saturday:
"Feed by pursuit-plunging and pursuit-diving, usually in flocks; surfacing
birds
leap-frog over flock, ....often feed in mixed-species flocks with ....
Silver Gulls,...."
I'm sure this is no surprise for the pelagic gurus but it's the first time
I've seen
Fluttering Shearwaters doing this.
Do traps for young players turn into traps for middle-aged players?
Philip Griffin
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
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