Norfolk Island and Mystery Petrel

[richard baxter <>]

Hello all,

            Have not long returned from 5 days on Norfolk Island. Managed to see pretty much everything apart from the owl. Arrived on the first day, booked into our accomodation and took off in our hire car straight to the botanical gardens and the avairy in search of Red-crowned Parakeet.  It took us about 2minutes from the time we got out of the car to find one sitting in a nearby tree and this was to be the only time we saw it in the five days we were there.

Over the next five days we spent many hours sitting on cliff tops seawatching.  Lots of Black-winged Petrels and Wedge-tailed Shearwater present along with the usual White Terns, Red-tailed Tropicbirds, Masked Booby and Black Noddy.  No Little Shearwaters sighted, still to early for them.

The two hardest birds to find were Californian Quail and the Golden Whistler.  It took us until the last morning to get views of the whistler in the national park.

I chartered two fishing boats for pelagic trips. (Mike Simpson and Ian Kenny), there are two other people on the island that do boat charters, but they were both away.  I only had two opportunities to get out to sea and rather than go to Philip Island I chose to go to the shelf twice.

The first trip yeilded nothing unusual.  Good numbers of Black-winged Petrels flying close to the boat and a we stopped to investigate a large flock of 500+ birds feeding beyond the shelf but these turned out to be mostly Wedge-tailed SW.

The second trip was more interesting with the bird of the trip being seen and photographed from the boat.  Upon arriving at the shelf the first bird to cruise by was a White-tailed Tropicbird followed by over 100 Black-winged Petrels.  At times they were circling the boat and flying within meters of our heads. Hundreds of photos were taken.

We drifted to about 25km offshore, which is about 5-6km past the shelf.

At this location a petrel flew very close to the boat and was not seen approaching as it flew in with the sun behind it. When first seen I called Tahiti Petrel and managed the one and only photo, which shows the underbody and underwing.  It then banked and flew off giving good extended views of a uniformly all dark upperwing and body.

Since returning home I have sent the digital photo to a few people and ID still remains a mystery.

The following species have all been mentioned:

Kermadec Petrel

Phoenix Petrel

Herald Petrel

Beck's Petrel

Atlantic Petrel

Magenta Petrel

 

The only thing we can agree on is that it is not a Tahiti Petrel.

 

If you would like a try at the ID I can email you the picture.

 

 

Regards

Richard Baxter

Newcastle

 

 

 

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