Dear All
Stuart Warren
and I just had a long weekend on Lord Howe Island. We arrived Thursday
afternoon from Brisbane and returned on Sunday afternoon (home for lunch!). The
weather and in particular the wind was very kind to us as the rest of the week
was rough and boats were not going offshore.
We saw all the ‘normal’
land birds with Woodhens seen around the built up areas as well as more
authentically or naturally
in the rain forest environment on the lower slopes of Mt Ligbird. We even saw
birds in the forest without their leg irons! We made no
attempt to see the introduced Masked Owls.
We did 2
afternoon trips (Friday 25th Feb and Saturday 26th Feb )
with Jack Shick and Ian Hutton down to Balls Pyramid. We saw 18 species of
seabird on the island 17 of which were from these trips – all 14 breeding
species plus 1 White-necked Petrel (although Vanuatu Petrel was not
specifically ruled out), 1 Great-winged Petrel (gouldii) and 1 light
phase Pomerine Jaeger. A few Great Cormorants were seen around the coast.
Providence Petrels were present in small numbers (the first of the season on
the 25th) and we had 1 Little Shearwater alongside the boat on the
26th, which was a very early bird. We had good nos. - 20+
White-bellied Storm Petrels but all were light phase birds – we did not see the
hoped for dark phase of this species. Kermadec Petrels
were present in good nos. - 30+ (including all phases) as were Black-winged
Petrels.
We spent quite a bit
of time in the middle of the day and afternoon on a couple of days checking the
Red-tailed Tropicbirds for the Red-billed. It is a species I am very familiar
with and it
was not present during our time at Kim’s Lookout and adjacent areas. According
to Ian it hasn’t
been seen since before Christmas when it was disturbed a number of times at its
‘nest’ area by visiting birders and a big storm came through. It may not have
left for those reasons though and it will be interesting to see if it comes
back next year as some seabirds have a tendency to do.
We saw the
usual waders plus a couple of Wandering Tattlers and the only other vaguely
unusual thing we saw was an Australia Ibis at the airport marsh yesterday. I am
not sure how many records of Pomerine Jaeger there have been from Lord Howe –
it is not listed in any of the literature I have.
Cheers
Rob Morris
Brisbane, Australia
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