As someone who has spent more than 2000 hours on clifftops staring out to
sea (yes, that's not a typo), I can't let this pass. I've got nothing
against being tossed around in six metre seas, glimpsing a Blue Petrel
through spray while trying to keep your breakfast down, nor have I got
anything against spending ten hours going to the shelf break and back to
see ten species that you could have seen from land in half an hour. It's
worth it if you've experienced some of the legendary pelagics, like the
October 1996 Sydney one, or several of the 1999 ones off Sydney and
Wollongong. But there have been some magic moments from land too, where,
as Edwin points out, you can go home and watch the footy if there's nothing
happening out to sea.
Apart from some seabirds I've seen from land off Sydney, but not on boats -
Antarctic Petrel, Kerguelan Petrel, Roseate Tern - there are quite a few
others that are seen more from land that boats: Southern Fulmar (5 to 2),
Common Diving Petrel (16 to 2), Northern Giant Petrel (42 to 18),
Slender-billed Prion (33 to 8), Streaked Shearwater (29 to 2), Buller's
Shearwater (35 to 18), (all the shearwaters apart from extreme rarities are
seen more from land than boats, as are the commoner albatrosses, skuas
(even Pomarine) and most terns), Brown Booby (5 to 2), and Long-tailed
Jaeger (363 to 23).
It's great to watch hundreds of seabirds in a feeding frenzy around a boat,
but something quite different to watch them from a cliff doing their
natural thing, and there's something of a thrill and a challenge to IDing a
dark shearwater at 3kms, or a White Tern on the horizon, and picking out
the different prions that have been blown in to the foot of the cliffs. Or
watching a Providence Petrel loop the loop in a force 10 storm. Or picking
out suddenly a Kermadec Petrel from the stream of tens of thousands of
Short-tailed Shearwaters passing south. Some of you guys don't know what
you're missing.
Associate Professor Rod Gardner
School of Education & Professional Studies (Brisbane, Logan)
Mount Gravatt Campus
Tel: ±61 7 3735 3472
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