Last word from me!
Hi Stephen
If you were looking with the sun behind you, afternoon, the pale under
wing of StSws are very white and can cause confusion.
It was mid morning, but pretty bright, so OK fair enough.
Telling a SoSw
from the shore is pretty difficult as their flight is generally longer
glide than a StSw.
With the pale phase WtSw, which are extremely rare, you would be looking
for the same jiz ase ordinary ones, ie with the wings held forward with
plenty of glide.
The jizz was identical to the dark ones. We had hundreds of Fluttons there:
smaller, more compact, and jizz more like Manx, Balearic, Black-vented. We
were very impressed by the powerful jizz of Wedge-tailed, probably shooting
myself in the foot by saying this but they almost gave the impression of a
Pomarine Jaeger. Including the pale one.
There are Fluttering Shearwater that is black and
white and common off Bass Point, if I remember that is were you were
correctly, and there is a very occasional Streaked Sw.
We have published the relative abundance of the seabirds off Wollongong
twice and about to start the 20 year one so the data is pretty robust.
I have seen the best seabirders make mistakes as they (we) all tend to
call first to gain every ones attention rather than to be sure and have
some miss the sighting as they often just zoooom through.
What you have to bear in mind is these aren't birds we called on the spot,
rather notes were taken, and research done on our return. I am perfectly
happy to accept the Short-taileds as such, I think it goes without saying
they must have been; I have merely attempted to explain why we came to the
conclusion they were Sooty in the first place. I took offence to the tone of
a couple of emails early on, including one at least from someone in a
position which ought to carry the responsibility of educating the
uneducated. There is absolutely nothing in the available field guides which
says "if you see large numbers of Sooty-type shearwaters of NSW in summer
they will be Short-tailed", so we got it wrong!
All the best
Steve
Cheers Chris
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