Hi everyone,
Just home after a long weekend on the water off Ulladulla but thought I had
better just put up a quick confirmatory email after Mick Roderick's post.
Yes, we also had a New Zealand Storm-petrel coming to the back of the boat for
about 40 minutes today. It was not in view all of the time but showed pretty
well every ten minutes as it approached the vessel along the slick trailing
behind us. I believe we were about 35 nm from the coast at the bottom of the
continental slope (maybe 5-10 nm beyond the shelf break). But I will post the
exact coordinates in the next few days.
I have some average photos but several others got some really nice shots that
will hopefully be posted somewhere on the net in the next few days. If not I
will put mine up somewhere.
We were also joking about how it may be possible to organise a trip in the next
few days that would allow birders to target this species. We too thought it
unlikely the birds were the same individuals. And from a quick look at the
photos of the Port Stephen's bird I would suggest this is the case. Their bird
appears to be more strongly streaked than ours. Though obviously this
diagnostic feature was still easily seen (I won't go into a full description
here as my eyes are closing and my bed is calling). Similarly to the PS trip
there were large numbers of Wilson's Storm-petrels moving through and could
these be dragging the NZ Stormies with them or are the strong westerly currents
from about 200 nm off the Australian east coast bringing in suitable waters?
These two finds within two days will obviously provide extremely useful hints
re. NZ Storm-petrel dispersal and the possibility that current population
estimates are on the low side. Obviously all this is complete conjecture but it
would be great to see some discussion on birding-Aus over the next week.
As for being beaten to this find by about 20 hours - Mick you are in real
trouble now. First you show up on my honeymoon, now this......
Other nice birds on this two night pelagic (late Saturday till Monday evening),
included a Red-footed Booby (surely one of the most southerly Australian
records), White-tailed Tropicbird, 3 White Tern, 10+ Gould's Petrel, several
Kermadec Petrel, Long-tailed Jaeger and a Common Noddy. I am probably leaving a
few things off but too tired right now and to be honest after NZ Storm-petrel
everything else is a very distant second. There was certainly no need to enter
into a 'bird of the trip' discussion!
Cheers Dan
> Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:29:00 -0700
> From:
> To:
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] New Zealand Storm-petrel seen off Port Stephens,
> NSW (and 2nd record already)
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> A bird that was almost certainly a New Zealand Storm-petrel was seen by 12
> observers on a pelagic trip that I ran off Port Stephens yesterday. We all
> had good to reasonable views of the bird, which was seen just to the north of
> 32 57 10 / 152 36 35 (sorry, no GPS co-ordinates were taken at the time of
> the observation but it would have been very close to this point, less than a
> nautical mile anyway) at about 1215 yesterday afternoon.
>
> Without going into too much detail about the bird, it clearly possessed all
> of the distinguishing features of a NZ Storm-petrel, most notably the dark
> "streaked" markings on the belly and flanks. Also distinguishing the bird
> from Fregetta Storm-petrels were the size, projection of legs beyond the
> tail, the amount of white on the rump and behaviour (jizz was similar to
> Wilson's which were around the boat also). Images can be seen at
> http://s178.photobucket.com/albums/w248/Brewerbackpacker/New%20Zealand%20Storm-petrel%20Port%20Stephens%2028-03-10/
> - I hope the link works.
>
> Myself and Allan Richardson have been trawling through all of the available
> information and it appears that there is little doubt in the identification
> of the bird as a New Zealand Storm-petrel. This I believe would be a first
> for Australia.
>
> But get this - I was contacted by Dan Mantle just a few hours ago. Dan is
> currently aboard the SOSSA Deep Sea pelagic trip off Ulladulla. Remarkably,
> they had a NZ Stormy around their boat at about 0900 this morning! Their
> observation was about 10nm east of the shelf. They had excellent views and
> have better photographs than our bird (which never really came within 40 or
> 50m of the boat). So we have a probable Australian first and then the second
> record the following day!
>
> The chances of this being the same bird as ours are likely to be quite remote
> (happy to be proven wrong). Perhaps there are some birds "moving through"
> with the Wilson's Storm-petrels, or got "caught up" with them? Wilson's are
> in good numbers at the moment - we had about 40 around the boat at one stage
> and Dan informs me that the deep sea trip had 100+ at one point. Clearly we
> know extremely little about anything to do with NZ Stormies, let alone what
> their movements etc might be, but with 2 records off the NSW central / south
> coasts in 24 hours, it may not be a ridiculous suggestion that the species
> could be targeted at the moment. I can provide contact details for a boat
> that can run off Port Stephens if people are that keen!
>
> Full trip reports will follow for the double-header pelagics that I ran off
> Port Stephens on the weekend. And what an amazing weekend it was. Apart from
> the NZ Stormy, we also had a Common Noddy and one, maybe 2 Gould's Petrels
> yesterday (and about 60-80 Wilson's SP), and on Saturday we had a
> White-bellied Storm-petrel, Tahiti Petrel, 2 Streaked Shearwaters and became
> what surely must be the first pelagic trip to record both Brown and
> Red-footed Boobies on the same day off NSW.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mick Roderick
>
>
>
>
> ==========www.birding-aus.org
> birding-aus.blogspot.com
>
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