BirdingNZ.net

Yesterday was second Tutukaka Pelagic Seabird trip which left Tutukaka at 7am and powered out past the Poor Knight Islands to the explore the trench area beyond.

10 of us were on the journey and over the course of the day, we sighted 21 different seabird species (see full list below), a few other bird species on the Islands, a couple of sunfish (one being cleaned by kingfish!) and some dolphins. A fantastic day had by all!

Highlights of the trip were:
– 1 White-naped Petrel
– 1 Mottled Petrel
– 1 Pomarine Jaeger
– 18 Gray Noddy
– Approx 40 NZ Storm-Petrels, along with some White-Faced Storm Petrels bouncing around the boat at most spots - a delight to watch.

Cheers Scott

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So here’s the full trip results:

1 x Royal Albatross (Northern)
1 x Mottled Petrel
1 x White-naped Petrel
2 x Gray-faced Petrel
31 x Cook's Petrel
260 x Fairy Prion
28 x Black (Parkinson’s) Petrel
3 x Flesh-footed Shearwater
3000 x Buller's Shearwater
1 x Sooty Shearwater
33 x Fluttering Shearwater
2 x Common Diving-Petrel
20 x White-faced Storm-Petrel
38 x New Zealand Storm-Petrel
1 x Pomarine Jaeger
18 x Gray Noddy
2 x Little Penguin
500 x Australasian Gannet
80 x Red-billed Gull
30 x Kelp Gull
45 x Pied Cormorant

Birds seen flying over the Poor Knights Island:
3 x Swamp Harrier
1 x Sacred Kingfisher
2 x Red-crowned Parakeet
1 x Tui
3 x Bellbird
3 x Welcome Swallow
3 x European Starling

And here's a pic for Chris Gaskin showing a banded NZ Storm Petrel. It was the only one I noticed (or photographed) on the trip.

Cheers Scott

I photographed a New Zealand Storm Petrel off the Poor Knights Islands with legs bands on Saturday 13th Jan. It was one of 38 NZSPs seen during the day. Most of them were seen while chumming over and beyond the shelf. One was seen quite close to The Sugarloaf.

Link to photo: https://scontent.fpmr1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/ ... e=5AEF1F8A

Nice photo Scott! I can only make out one band on each leg. If you have others in the series or higher res versions hopefully we can work out when that bird was banded.

Michael, is this the same as the one Scott posted (viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7460#p35878 I'll merge the two threads)? Keen to see closer images of the bands so we can better identify it, if you can post them here or email me.

Yes, it looks to be the same bird with white right and blue left. I sent the high res image to Alan and Chris on the weekend.

Thanks Michael. Scott also sent me some more photos and it looks like it has lost a colour band, but with the remaining blue on left and black over metal on right we can at least say it was one of the birds banded on Little Barrier in Feb 2015.

Talk of the brown skua seen on the last Tutukaka trip reminded me of the skua on this trip. At the time it was put down as a pomarine, though there was some discussion later that it might be something else. I never did hear whether any final conclusion was reached. My best photo below (much cropped), though I'm sure others got better. The head colour looks odd for pomarine, as far as I can see more like South Polar, though to my eye it looks a bit slender for one of those. Opinions?

It looks good for a paler pomarine for me David. Thin bill tapering to a point, whereas I’d expect a south polar to have a much more uniformly robust bill than that, with a noticeable hook to the uppermandible. Furthermore if you look at the undertail coverts you can see it’s heavily barred which is a distinctly pomarine/arctic feature

Thanks David. I did think it was too slender for a South Polar, especially around the bill, but I'd never seen any pomarines, or pictures of them, with a pale, uncapped head like this. Looking around now, the closest I can find is the juvenile in the photo captioned "2 adults and an immature Pomarine Skua. I do not see often adult birds of the dark phase " about half way down this page - http://roeef.blogspot.com/2017/. So probably a juvenile?