Humpback whale migration at Sydney

Just an awesome experience this afternoon,  we set out from Circular Quay at 13.15 in search of migrating whales and saw at least five Humpbacks. At first they just broke the surface to reveal their dorsal fins, but soon we saw them tail slapping until eventually they breached and jumped clear out of the water on two occasions.  Also on the way back we saw three Pacific Dolphins.

Now that's the way to see a humpback! Breathtaking!

A pectoral fin slap.

Seawatching on a whale tour from Sydney

This may not have been a pelagic, but for a birder on his first visit to the southern hemisphere it was still a great experience. While we were searching for the tell tale signs of whales, a casual remark by a crew member to say that he may have seen a blow just left of that albatross alerted me to the fact that my number 1 target species was nearby. I saw it immediately, a huge  bird with black upper wing and white body, clearly an albatross, but which species? I think that it is a black-browed albatross, but am open to suggestions.

There were hundreds of shearwaters around, and I managed to succesfully identify three species, wedge-tailed, short-tailed and fluttering. An unexpected bonus was two Australasian Gannets.

Black-browed albatross. I have seen one before, sitting on a cliff in amongst the Gannet colony on Unst, Shetland, but I didn't see that bird fly and I desperately wanted to see a "mollyhawk" in the southern oceans. Fantastic bird!

Look at those wings! Definitely made for gliding!

I think that the dark underwing makes this an immature bird and I think they more or less rule out every species except black-browed.

 Fluttering shearwater

Short-tailed shearwater

Wedge-tailed shearwater

Welcome swallow

New Zealand fur seal, Sydney Opera House

New Zealand fur seals are endemic to New Zealand and parts of southern Australia but are not normally found in the Sydney area. However this individual has taken up residence on the steps of the Opera House.

Sydney day 2

Weather not so great in Sydney today, cloudy with drizzly rain on and off. Even so we had a nice bike ride around the city and beyond. The light wasn't great for photography but here are a few birds from the day. Laughing kookaburra, rainbow lorikeet, Australasian darter, chestnut teal, white-faced heron, Pacific black duck and magpie lark.

Birding Sydney with jet lag.

Day one of our holiday to Australia and we're in Sydney with minor jet lag. Today we did a quick reccy of the place and walked through the Royal Botanic Gardens to the Opera House and then onto Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Finally we caught the ferry to Manly and had a walk around the headland.

Lots of new  birds for me today and I managed to put a name to most in the field and others I photographed and id'd later. Here's a small selection.

Pied Cormorant.

Crested tern

New Holland Honeyeater

Masked plover

Sulphur - crested cockatoo.

Little pied cormorant

Eastern water dragon

Black rock skink.

Aurora borealis in Dumfries-shire

My bat survey this evening ended in the most incredible way as I watched in amazement the flickering aurora borealis or Northern Lights from the top of a hill in Dumfries-shire. By lucky chance my work this evening had brought me to a high vantage point in the north, miles from the nearest habitation, with vast wide open views and completely free from light polution, in otherwords just about as good as it could possibly get for seeing this wonderful display.

The sky was black and full of stars, the kind of sky you just never see in a town or city. I was looking up admiring the stars, and ironically I didn't even know there was likely to be an aurora display tonight until I saw it. There was a huge arc across the sky which looked like pale green cloud, but as I watched it flickered and parts of it went out until eventually it was completely gone and the sky was black again. Suddenly another cloud formed as quickly as the first had vanished and I realised then that I was looking at the aurora.

I looked to the north and there was a pale green haze on the horizon with what looked like a flickering spotlight pointing vertically up.  A single dead straight beam of light appearing to shine up into the sky and terminating in what looked like small clouds of dust right above me, which danced across the sky and then disappeared. Then more spotlights appeared and they moved across the horizon and occasionally the intensity would diffuse and the beams would merge, only to split again, moving from right to left across the horizon and then back again, like some giant  distant rock concert which covered most of south west Scotland, while all of the time overhead the clouds of dust danced across the sky. Sometimes there were so many of these clouds that they covered half of the sky, at other times they looked like an airplane trail, the kind you see when the airplane has long passed and the trail has begun to dissipate, but it moved and wriggled like a giant snake across the heavens, and then it would split and the trail would begin to disappear and then in a second it was gone, and the sky was black again, except for the stars. I can't say that I saw the deep colours which some people have reported, just pale greens for me, but then I am partially colour blind so that doesn't help! An awesome experience!

Sitting on top of that hill, I couldn't help but think what a great descision it was to change careers a few years back. My office this evening was south west Scotland with the dark skies of Dumfries-shire lit by the aurora borealis, and soprano pipistrelle bats flying around me, and thousands of geese just a few miles away on the saltmarsh.....

Earlier I had called in again at Caerlaverock WWT in the hope that there might be a few more barnacle geese back by now. I noted yesterday that there had been a snow goose reported flying over with barnacles, but apparently not seen again, and I hoped to connect with this bird as well, though I did have my doubts, since there are at least a couple of leucistic (white) barnacles in the area which could easily be mistaken for a snow goose by inexperienced observers.

There were several thousand barnacles spread across the  saltmarsh, but by luck, right in front of the hide was the snow goose with about 1000 barnacles. While I watched, more and more barnacles dropped out of the sky and landed on the saltmarsh, and it really did feel like these might be new arrivals all the way from Svalbard. Of interest, the entire population of Svalbard barnacle geese over winters on the Solway, whilst the barnacles which spend the winter elsewhere in the UK, notably the Hebrides are from Greenland and these do not winter on the Solway. This perhaps casts some doubt on the origins of the snow goose which would be more likely to arrive with Greenland barnacles.


Year: 260 (Snow goose)

I love seeing snow geese with wild flocks like this, I find them really exciting birds, probably because one of the first rarities I ever saw was a snow goose with a huge pink-foot flock at Martin Mere when I was a kid. Easy enough to see straight away that it's not a leucistic barnacle, notice the monsterous pink bill compared to the dainty bill of the barnacles, the pure white plumage and the black primaries. There was a leucistic barnacle in the next field but too far for photography.

The bittern is still showing very well, though I had to be content with distant views today. I like this photo though!

Ring-billed gull and a posssible hybrid, Preston Dock

I was in the Preston area today so called in at the Riversway docklands on the off chance that the ring-billed gull might still be around, it last appeared on Birdguides on 26th September. It was still there and showing as well as ever near the Green Frog takeaway van.

The adult gull in the center is interesting, it was obviously darker than the adult herring gulls (e.g. the bird on the left) but paler than the lesser black backs (e.g. the bird on the right). It also looked bigger, had a heavier bill and a very red patch on the gonys. My initial reaction was adult yellow-legged gull, though I was concerned about the amount of streaking on the head and the amount of white in the primaries. I'm also told that it might be too dark for yellow-legged gull and that the head shape doesn't look quite right either. It may in fact be a herring x lesser black back hybrid! Don't think I'm ever going to get to grips with gulls......

Then again in this photo it looks considerably paler than the lesser black back.

Center bird again, behind the herring gull.

Second bird from the left.

Goose spectacular at Martin Mere

25,000+ pink-footed geese are roosting  at Martin Mere at the moment, and many thousand remaining on the reserve during the day. An awesome spectacle!

Sunderland Point

Finally today at Sunderland Point I saw a yellow-browed warbler, my first of 2015. There may be a huge influx into the country at the moment, mainly on the east coast but with plenty here in the north west as well, but I really struggle with this species. Looking back at my records, this was only my sixth EVER in over 40 years birding, and it's not through lack of trying.

For example, a week or two ago we tried for one at Easington near Spurn  but failed. On Thursday I was at Saltfleetby in Lincolnshire where there were three, but failed. Yesterday I was at Donna Nook in Lincolnshire where there were six, again I didn't see or hear a single one. This morning we visited Fleetwood where there had been two in a small park, but we dipped. Even this afternoon at Sunderland Point we spent three hours staring up into a single Sycamore tree (not a forest, one tree) where we knew for sure that there was a yellow-browed warbler, but we only had three fleeting glimpses, each lasting fractions of a second and never of the complete bird. It was like if we put all of the pieces together we came up with a yellow-browed warbler. If it was a life tick I probably wouldn't have counted it.

I've played the call over and over and know it better than the Match of the Day tune, but I never hear one even when they are in the tree above me. At Sunderland Point today, the bird was said to be very vocal in the morning, but in the afternoon, not a peap out of it!

Rant over, but hopefully I won't have to have the displeasure of looking for another until next year at the earliest. The best I can say about the species is it's on my year list. At least Sunderland Point is a nice place.

Year: 259 (Yellow-browed warbler)

The road to Sunderland Point!

Clouded Yellow

My first clouded yellow of the year was near Tetney Lock in Lincolnshire today. It's a pity they refuse to land with their wings open but always a pleasure to see.

Can't say Ive noticed the green eye before.

Baltic Gull, Lincoln

I was in Lincoln today, so decided to call in for a look at the putative adult Baltic gull Larus fuscus fuscus at Apex Pit. It's a small race of lesser black-back with a pure white head, smaller bill, a darker mantle (even darker than great black-back), obviously longer wings projecting well past the tail and primaries completely black except for a tiny white mirror on P1. No sign of any primary moult. Quite a smart looking bird.

The identification challenges of L.f.fuscus are discusssed here. Although it is pretty straight forward to separate this race from the typical race we see in Britain (L.f.graellsii), it is more difficult to separate it from L.f.intermedius which breeds in western Scandinavia but also occurs in Britain, especially in winter. Something like 15% of intermedius are dark enough to look like pale fuscus. However, the Lincoln bird meets most of the identification criteria for an adult fuscus as defined by fuscus expert Lars Jonsson, i.e. 1) unmoulted inner primaries, 2) a white unspotted head and 3) dark blackish upper parts. Only the brownish hue to the scapulars is missing, but at the distance the bird is being observed, at dusk, this is impossible to see (at least it was this evening).
 
Unfortunately it's so far only ever seen at the roost which means the light is very poor when it is present. It's a nice view through the scope, good enough to see the tiny mirror on P1,  but almost impossible to photograph.  In the photo below it's the third bird from the left. This photo was taken at sunset at a distance of about 400m, but even so it shows well the small size and long primaries.There is a nice comparison betweeen the this bird and the extreme left bird which is a graellsii

Thanks to Ben Ward for showing me round and getting me onto the bird.