Albatross identification

[Colin Miskelly]

Apologies for the late posting to a now-resolved question. It has taken a while to locate old slides and arrange for them to be scanned. But as there are few published images of fledgling mollymawks, and I have gone to this much effort, I'll add them to the string.

First up is a fledgling southern Buller's mollymawk in a pose as close as I could find to Craig McKenzie's original image.

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Wynston Cooper & I were on Little Solander Island 25-27 July 1985, and banded 137 Buller's mollymawk chicks. At that date no chicks had fledged. Two months later I landed on North-East Island, Snares Islands on 22 September, and found almost all the chicks gone. Thorough searching of accessible colonies 22-27 September located 21 chicks, of which I banded 17. The above image of a bird ready to fledge was taken on 22 September 1985.

I failed to find any good side-on images of Salvin's mollymawk chicks close to fledging, but the two attached show that their bills are blackish. Apologies for the poor quality of these photos cropped from larger images.

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The last two images were taken on the Western Chain, Snares Islands in February 1984. The side-on image with open beak was taken on Toru Islet on 12 Feb, and the front-on shot was taken on Rima Islet on 11 Feb (and was published in b&w in Notornis in 1984).

Salvin's mollymawks fledge in March-April and apparently immediately depart New Zealand waters (probably heading for Chile). It is unlikely that any birds of the year are close to New Zealand in August when Craig took his photo, at the peak fledgling time for southern Buller's mollymawks.

Regards
Colin Miskelly