The Wandering Tattler that Edwin mentioned a
couple of times over the past two days was seen
by Dave Mitford fairly briefly on Saturday,
flying past Magic Point, on the Malabar Headland,
in the southern part of Sydney's eastern suburbs.
Dave, Johan Stallberg and I were seawatching
there at the time. Dave also heard the call, but
the bird flew off without allowing close views.
On Sunday afternoon Johan relocated the bird, and
he and I got great views, managing to see all the
field marks apart from the long nasal groove.
These were: supercilium only to back as far as
above the eye, not meeting over the bill, full
thin white eyering, wingtips extending a fair way
beyond the tip of the tail, plus other supporting
plumage details (couple of pages of field notes
made). The absolute clincher was hearing it call
the long, six to seven note, descending call,
slightly reminiscent of a Whimbrel.
The area where it was seen on both occasions was
the rock platforms on the south side of Maroubra
Beach, near Magic Point, about 100 metres past
the Orang-bellied Parrot area from last year. One
problem with this area is that it is much loved
by fishermen. I checked yesterday (Monday)
morning, and couldn't locate it: there were two
fishermen on the rocks. There are, though, rock
platforms on the other side of Magic Point, round
to Long Bay and further south, so there are lots
of places where it could go if disturbed. The
best time to try would be low tide, currently
early morning and late afternoon.
Highlights of the seawatch on Saturday (with 19
seabird species) was 2-3 Buller's Shearwaters, a
few early Flesh-footed Shearwaters, Southern
Giant Petrel (plus a few unidentified GPs), four
commoner albatrosses, a latish White-fronted
Tern, and a few Great-winged Petrels, including
one that had us guessing for some time, trying to
make it into something rare.
Cheers,
Rod Gardner
--
Dr Rod Gardner
Senior Lecturer
Department of Linguistics
School of Modern Language Studies
University of New South Wales
NSW 2052
Australia
Tel: ±61 2 9385 1454
Fax: ±61 2 9385 8723
CRICOS Provider Code 00098G
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