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Ninety Mile Beach

Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 9:08 am
by Les Feasey
Hi All,
This is a bit late but here goes. Our Ninety Mile Beach patrols are supposed to be beach wreck patrols but picking up dead birds is a bit of a downer so we count the live birds as well. But first the beach-wrecked birds (it sounds a bit better than dead birds). On 24 July, 5 of us went out from Hukatere to The Bluff and we found:
Light-mantled Sooty Albatross
Sooty Shearwater
White-capped Mollymawk
Wandering Albatross
White-headed Petrel
Little Blue Penguin (only one)
Little Shearwater
Fairy Prion (5)
Antarctic Prion (2)
Salvin's Prion (3)
Now for the live birds: we also found 3 live birds in the surf - 2 Fairy Prions and a Thin-billed Prion - which we succoured and left on the Bluff where they had a chance of catching a breeze and lifting off. Curiosity about their fate led me back there next day and I picked up more beach-wrecks as well on the way to The Bluff. The beach wrecks were:
Antarctic Prion (2)
Thin-billed Prion (8)
Fairy Prion (6).
They were the result of the latest tides and fresh westerlies. I found the Thin-billed Prion on The Bluff pretty much where we'd left it but the 2 Fairy Prion had taken off.
For those of you who have been following it, the Tutukaka Pelagic produced hundreds (or thousands) of Prions, and there has been quite a bit of off-line discussion about the identity of some of the prions. It's a bit of a haul from Tutukaka to Ninety Mile Beach, and East Coast to West Coast, but maybe Oscar was right and there were Thin-billed Prion in the Tutukaka flock. I agree it's a lot easier to identify the birds in hand than from photos at sea.
I included the photo of the White-headed Petrel because it would have been a lifer for me if it, too, had been alive. Bummer.
Cheers,
Les

Re: Ninety Mile Beach

Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 9:34 am
by Colin Miskelly
Hi Les

I suspect the two birds in your images labelled as fairy prion are both thin-billed prions.

Cheers
Colin

Re: Ninety Mile Beach

Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 10:23 am
by Les Feasey
Thanks Colin. That helps a lot.

Re: Ninety Mile Beach

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 12:23 pm
by Alan Tennyson
I found 3 thin-billed & 2 fairy prions dead in 1km of Waikanae Beach (Wellington) on 29 July. Ian Southey & others found heaps of dead prions (mainly these 2 species) on Kariotahi Beach recently, so it seems that there are lots of dead (& live) prions of various kinds about at the moment.
cheers
Alan