Short version:
We went to Green Cape lighthouse (Ben Boyd NP, Bega Valley Shire, Far
South Coast NSW) yesterday and believe we saw many Yellow-nosed and
Shy Albatross and 1+ Black-browed Albatross. Good news: If you stand
in the right place, you can see several kinds of albatross without
worrying about getting sea-sick.
Long version follows.
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Suggestions Please!
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A few weeks back I sent a message to the list asking how people learn
to distinguish albatross from shore and received several helpful
answers. Since then, my wife and I have been planning to visit the
Green Cape to see if we could get some close sightings. I've put
together some information about our sightings as well as the
background information we've absorbed on albatrosses in general. I'd
be grateful for any suggestions, tips, comments, or corrections.
Anyone who has something of general interest to suggest, please post
to the whole list. It's always nice to see something other than the
Very Familiar Threads in the archives. I should mention that from the
volume of private mail I received to my last albatross post that a
*lot* of people feel like novices when it comes to albatrosses, so
contributions from more experienced people may help many list members.
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Getting Close to Albatrosses
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I've long been puzzled and or intimidated by messages where people
report albatross sightings and confidently identify which albatross
they saw. Whenever I go to a promising headland, I'm lucky if I can
tell that I'm seeing an albatross, never mind what sort it is. Okay,
I've finally figured out the secret: you need to be standing on a
cliff where the albatrosses come in close. I guess that sounds
obvious, but I don't know how many headlands there are that fit this
description. A year or so a go a geologist told me that he had been
told in school that Green Cape is the point on the Australian mainland
that is closest to the continental shelf, which would seem to make it
ideal for seabird watching. (I can't verify that this geological
detail is true as I've not been able to find any on-line bathymetric
charts. If anyone knows for sure, I'd be grateful for an update.)
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Albatrosses and Sea Depth
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As I understand it, albatross are birds of the true ocean - not the
continental shelf. This explains why they are hard to see from land
and why you see them in exactly the conditions where you don't see
many seagulls, characteristic birds of the continental shelf. (You
could live in Hawaii for your whole life and never notice a seagull
while noddies, boobies, frigatebirds, tropicbirds, and albatross are
all visible from land at various points.) As albatross are
ground-nesters, they need to breed on remote rocks and islands without
land predators...which makes them pretty hard to see up close.
Virtually all populated islands have land predators now so the only
colonies left are on isolated locations, by definition. Some
exceptions to this are a tiny colony of Laysan Albatross at Kaena
Point on Maui and the colony of Royal Albatross that established
itself near Dunedin, New Zealand back in the 30s.
So, if I've got the background information right, the best place to
see albatrosses from the mainland is where the coast is close to the
edge of the continental shelf. Is there more to it than this?
Presumably other sea, land and wind features make a difference...does
anyone know what factors or combination of factors makes the birds
come in close to shore? Headwinds? Upwellings? Seasonal currents? More
to the point, which headlands are best? I can say that Green Cape is
excellent but it would be great to have a list of the best spots
around the country for when on the road. As an example, is Cape Byron
good?
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Field Guides
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We thought we'd be smart and bring along several guides with
albatrosses as we don't yet have "Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters
of the World." We brought Pizzey (6th) as that's our standard guide,
"Birds of Chile" as it has great albatross plates, and "Birds of New
Zealand" as it has quite a lot of albatross information and we should
be getting much the same birds here. As it turns out, we only used
Pizzey because the books don't use the same common or scientific
names. Has anyone worked up a cross-reference or summary of the
various scientific names in use? I can work one out but I'm guessing
others have already done the same.
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Field Marks and Such
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Down at the lighthouse, there were lots of Gannets, some smaller terns
(Common or White-fronted, I'd guess...we didn't look carefully as we
were concentrating on the albatrosses), and tens of albatrosses. I
can't guess distances, but the albatrosses were obviously albatross
with the naked eye, their basic patterns and shapes were clearly
visible with the naked eye or binoculars, basic bill color was
sometimes visible with binoculars, and more detailed bill features
could (when lucky) be distinguished with a scope (Pentax 65EDA-II with
a 20-60 zoom).
We saw what looked like three different birds:
* Pretty much all of them looked the same from above:
-- White/light head
-- Dark wings, sometimes not so dark on the back itself
-- White before the tail
-- Dark tail-tip
* From underneath, most birds had nearly all-white wings with dark edges.
-- Some had more black at the tips of the wings than others.
-- Of these birds, the bill color was basically yellow/cream/ivory in
some and basically black in others.
-- My wife noticed that some of these birds were visibly larger than
others when viewed side-by-side. (I understand that size is a pretty
useless field mark unless you have something to compare to - but we
can say that these similarly marked birds came in two sizes.)
-- Our tentative identification of these are Yellow-nosed (dark bill)
and Shy (yellowish bill).
-- Using the scope on birds resting on the water made the basic bill
colors clear enough and it was sometimes possible to see the yellow
line on the top of the Yellow-nose's bill. (Their bill is basically
dark, despite the name.)
* We saw at least one bird in flight that had a markedly different
underwing pattern with lots of black and some white in the middle of
the wing that we're tentatively identifying as a Black-browed
Albatross. We also saw a bird on the water that looked *exactly* like
a Black-browed. We've had the good fortune to visit one of their
larger accessible breeding colonies (Saunders Island, Falklands) so
this is a bird we have had a chance to spend time up close to. (A few
of our nesting Black-browed pictures from Saunders can be found at
http://www.wombatcountry.com/birds/albatross/index.html.)
Any thoughts questions or comments on our observations or
identifications much appreciated!
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Quick Lessons
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We learned a lot in a couple of hours of watching that will help us in
the future, namely:
* An albatross on the wing flies very differently to a Gannet. The
albatrosses seem to keep their wings stretched out while Gannets flap
a lot more. That's a pretty helpful general field mark (if accurate)
when viewing distant birds. Can someone more experienced comment on
this?
* Albatrosses don't dive while Gannets to...we knew that already but
it's another helpful long-distance field mark.
* The under-wing pattern on the albatrosses is very visible and can
definitely sort the birds into at least two groups: "mostly white
underneath with black edges all around" and "lots more black than
white underneath."
* You need to be standing in the right place ;-)
All-in-all, it was a rewarding outing and really encouraging.
Albatross are magnificent birds and I'd pretty well despaired of
seeing them or sorting them out from land here in Australia. After
yesterday, I've got the feeling that we can see them from land and
have a good chance of learning to tell at least many of them apart.
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Gear Note
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One reason I got a scope was to watch seabirds. I have to say, it's
helpful at this stage but I think I'd need to know sea birds a lot
better before I could really count on it. If the birds are far enough
out that you _need_ a scope, chances are the scope alone won't be
enough unless you've got the birds and their field marks pretty well
internalized already. As it was, the scope was great for studying
birds as they were sitting on the water. When things went well, this
let us get a decent look at the color(s) of the bill. Tracking birds
in flight is hard with a scope but fun when it works. It's a real
thrill to see an albatross banking away and revealing its underwing.
They just seen massive and incredibly elegant. For anyone in the
market for a tripod assembly, I got the Manfrotto 322RC2 ball-head
mount. (Thanks to Carl Clifford for the recommendation.) This grip
lets you swivel the scope freely without moving the tripod. As soon as
you let go of the grip, the head fixes firmly in place. It's pretty
ideal for birds in flight...but it's tricky enough to really make you
admire the skill of wildlife cameramen.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions from anyone whose
made it to the end of this message. And, again, please post comments
of genera use to the list so that everyone (and the archives) benefit.
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David Adams
Wallaga Lake 2546 NSW
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