Tern ID at Kaitorete Spit end.

[Jan]

Thanks for that detail, AC

[andrewcrossland]

Hi team,

Hey I'm working on the latest edition of the CHCH-Central Canterbury bird checklist and the Lake Ellesmere checklist and remembered this stunning bird. Rowey and others, can you update me on what we all decided the ID was, and did it go in as a UBR?

hopefully folks can remember? A bird this awesome and with great photos like these shouldn't be lost from the record!

AC

[andrewcrossland]

Rowey, did you have any more pics of the bird, other than the ones you posted? From different angles? Showing more detail on size compared to surrounding birds? Thanks

[rowey]

Hi Andrew.

I submitted a UBR (2015/076) and as I know it, this was held in suspense. I lost a lot of photos and data on a defunct external hard drive, which I may be able to recover through a tech Guru. No promises though. Knowing what I know now, I am a lot more aware of protocols and policies for rare birds and sharing of information, and maybe with the benefit of hindsight, more should and could have been done in regards to this bird sighting.

Regards

Kieran.

[Oscar Thomas]

I find it interesting it was held in suspense so I checked the Notornis reference to the submission which can be found here: http://rare.birds.org.nz/files/documents/kjLVrKbmBk.pdf
"Records held in suspense: There were 2 UBRs submitted for which the RAC was unable to reach a decision. A tern photographed at Kaitorete Spit, Canterbury, on 28 November 2015 (UBR 2015/76) was possibly an Antarctic tern (Sterna vittata), a species not yet confirmed to occur north of Stewart Island. UBR 2016/21 (submitted as ‘prehistoric bird’, Taihape, 1 January 2005) was unidentifiable."

Funny little anecdote with the 'prehistoric bird' there as well. So it seems it wasn't confirmed as Antarctic because of how far north it was. Since this however, the species has reached Awarua Bay in Southland and the Otago Peninsula, and it's not a big leap to Canterbury from there for a tern. So the identification points for Antarctic (over Arctic) are as follows:
- Relatively large stout bill, big head and long legs
- Breeding plumage in late November

While it does appear more pale on the face/throat than it probably should, I think this could be explained by it being in pretty fresh breeding plumage. The only other option for ID would be South American tern, which I'm sure we can agree would be straying much further from it's natural range. New Zealand Antarctic terns are said on NZBO to rarely venture more than 2km from their breeding grounds, yet are well-described and well-photographed stragglers to Tasmania (eBird: 2 in 2015; 2 in 2016; 3 in 2021) and mainland Australia (1 in 2005; 5 in 2006; 6 in 2015; 2 in 2016; 1 in 2019; 3+ in 2021) which would be an even further journey for them. Another subspecies appears to regularly visit South Africa, showing capacity for long-distance travel (if it was in any doubt for terns).
Hopefully the record will be re-assessed - Rowey, if you like you could prompt the RAC to do this via email and share my comments. There's something agonizing about leaving birds like this unidentified!

[andrewcrossland]

Thanks Oscar, that's a good synopsis of what we now know about the occurrence of Antarctic Terns well away from their breeding grounds and it would only be a 510 km straight-line distance from the nearest Antarctic Tern breeding population on Stewart Island to Kaitorete Spit tip. The geography of the SI's east coast is such that all sorts of out-of-range birds have set themselves down for a breather at Kaitorete Spit over the years. Just look at last year's southern seabird event.

As a member of the RAC, I certainly wouldn't be unhappy to receive an updated UBR with more information and additional discussion to knock this bird into either the "yes" or "no" columns, rather than sitting it in suspense forever and being lost to history.

Kieran, maybe you might be interested in teaming up with Oscar and 1 or 2 others who are equally intrigued by this bird and re-submit a more detailed UBR? More pics would be great and I might be able to put you in touch with a CHCH birder (who rides a bike, takes pretty good photos and knows who he is!) who told me once that he has a knack for playing around with tech, opening up computers and retrieving lost data from hard drives?

AC

[GrahameNZ]

Being the person Andrew refers to above.
Yes data can be retrieved from hard drives.
If the hd is still functional and hasn't had much use after the data being lost, then it's relatively easy.
If it's been over written a few times then it gets progressively harder.
If the hd is borked, which I'm guessing is what the "defunct" part of Kierans post above means.
Then it's still a tentative possibly.
It requires taking the platters out of the dead drive and putting into a donor.
The donor needs to be the same make, model and preferably batch as the dead drive.
ie specialist work.
Read expensive.
If you still have the drive a trick that works sometimes is to put the dead drive into a zip lock bag and put it into a freezer for a couple of days.
Have a caddy ready for when you take it out.
Put it into the caddy and attach to a computer as quick as possible.
Sometimes they will spin up long enough to get some data off.
It requires a bit of black majic and various incantations as well
That's enough tec talk for the day.
Back to more serious stuff like birding.
But yep Kieran, if the drive fits into the possibles above drop me a pm, no worries

[rowey]

Andrew, give me a few days and I will get on to it. Not much time at the moment. Good suggestion. Oscar, I will contact you as well. Graham, I will call you if I need you. Sounds like you are a man of many talents! Wife has taken the "defunct" drive to somebody, she has stuff on there she would like back as well.

Cheers

Kieran.

[Graeme T]

I was surprised this one was not accepted as an Antarctic Tern. It seems to have all the right characters of that species and from the size comparison with White-fronted terns looks a smaller bird. Its been years since I last saw an Antarctic tern in the flesh but I did see them pretty much daily over the 18 months I lived on Campbell Island in the 1980s. I spent a lot of time looking at them closely as I was trying to see if any Arctic terns were roosting with them. Also seen them at Auckland and Antipodes more recently. I refreshed my memory comparing the images on nzbirdsonline and there are images there that look pretty close to this bird with respect to bill shape and colour, plumage colour and leg length/colour. So I would certainly back the ID being an Antarctic tern. As we know from this summer (Black tern) these small seabirds can be quite mobile.