On a few occasions lately I have witnessed how nasty the Northern Giant Petrel
can be. Firstly off Port Fairy on shelf on the 27th people aboard the boat had
4 GPs (3 definite Northerns, perhaps 1 Southern) attacking a Short-tailed
Shearwater and drowning it. We later went over to check out the corpse floating
on the sea.
In addition to this I spotted a Northern GP off Cape Nelson yesterday (3/11/13)
about 10AM. There were heaps of Short-tailed Shearwaters offshore, some sitting
on the ocean. This of course is not unusual at the moment with big wrecks about
everywhere in SE Aust. The GP kept flying up to a STS sitting on the water &
jumping on it. The STS would either dive under the water & evade that way, or
fly off. This it did about 6 times before the NGP actually jumped on a bird
which was probably too weak to get away. It then grabbed it and took off with
it, then landed and attacked it's belly. The poor shearwater was flaying it's
legs and wings around. Eventually you'd expect the NGP to start eating the
thing. It did peck at it a bit, but then abandoned the bird (not sure if it was
dead, but it would have been mortally wounded) & then proceeded to have a go at
several other shearwaters on the water. I got the feeling the NGP was acting
like the Grim Reaper & selecting the shearwaters th
at were ready to die!
I have noticed that there have been Northern Giant Petrels hanging around
southern Australia (Cape Nelson, Port Fairy, Port MacDonnell & Eaglehawk Neck)
& perhaps taking advantage of the plight that the STS are in at the moment.
It's also interesting that there have only been a few Southern Giant Petrels
the whole year. I remember Southerns being more common than Northern,
particularly in the mid and later part of winter. Northerns seem to outnumber
them lately. Has anyone noticed a decline in SGP numbers, as opposed to NGP
numbers?-Kevin Bartram
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