Hi Neil, based on the measurements you gave me, it would appear that the bird is a Salvin’s Prion, probably a female. You’ll have a better idea if you can get the specimen to the museum. That is a fair chunk of a bill on that bird, P. salvini and P. desolata are very similar so it would pay to get it measured by someone with the right tools (calipers). Salvin’s for mine but see what the Museum thinks or if you can get it to Mike Carter. Meantime the bird needs to be frozen. Cheers – Paul.
******************************************************************************** This email, including any attachments sent with it, is confidential and for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). This confidentiality is not waived or lost, if you receive it and you are not the intended recipient(s), or if it is transmitted/received in error. Any unauthorised use, alteration, disclosure, distribution or review of this email is strictly prohibited. The information contained in this email, including any attachment sent with it, may be subject to a statutory duty of confidentiality if it relates to health service matters. If you are not the intended recipient(s), or if you have received this email in error, you are asked to immediately notify the sender by telephone collect on Australia +61 1800 198 175 or by return email. You should also delete this email, and any copies, from your computer system network and destroy any hard copies produced. If not an intended recipient of this email, you must not copy, distribute or take any action(s) that relies on it; any form of disclosure, modification, distribution and/or publication of this email is also prohibited. Although Queensland Health takes all reasonable steps to ensure this email does not contain malicious software, Queensland Health does not accept responsibility for the consequences if any person’s computer inadvertently suffers any disruption to services, loss of information, harm or is infected with a virus, other malicious computer programme or code that may occur as a consequence of receiving this email. Unless stated otherwise, this email represents only the views of the sender and not the views of the Queensland Government. **********************************************************************************
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
Neil Shelley kindly brought the frozen Prion to my home this morning. In the hand, my initial ID from the photographs as a Slender-billed Prion was immediately confirmed by the slender nature of the bill with concave sides, no visible lamellae and black on undertail restricted to a narrow black line down the centre. But we still got out two sets of callipers, numerous books and papers and poured over them for well over an hour and compared the bill shape to numerous published diagrams, all of which pointed unquestionably to that conclusion. However, there was significant discrepancies between the references regarding bill measurements. Neil and I agreed on the following dimensions (mm) for his specimen, each of which are either slightly above or towards the upper limit for this species but too small for Antarctic Prion and are out of the ball-park for Salvin’s Prion. the very fresh specimen will be deposited at Museum Victoria, Melbourne. Bill length: chord of exposed culmen from tip to feathers 28.5, to skull 35. Bill depth: at point level with base of culmen, 11.4 and at immediately at front of nostrils 7.7, i.e. not at its shallowest point. Bill width: at point level with base of culmen, 11.4. It doesn’t help when several sources don’t advise or aren’t clear as to how or precisely where on the specimens their dimensions were measured. Some were evidently made at a non-conventional point. For instance in HANZAB Volume 1 bill depth for Prions is obviously at a point ahead of the nostrils contrary to the instruction given on page 37. I’m sure such advice is there somewhere but I couldn’t find it. Also typo’s such as that on page 540 under ‘Recognition’ for Slender-billed Prion, ‘Bill measurements average 26.5 mm long, 14 mm wide’! That ‘average’ is 1.5 mm larger than the widest reported therein!
Mike Carter 30 Canadian Bay Road Mount Eliza VIC 3930 Tel (03) 9787 7136
Thanks Mike, all makes sense and the figures that Neil gave me were higher than the ones you’ve provided here and seemed way too big for Slender-billed, should have paid closer attention to the actual bill structure though. The bill on this specimen is still seems quite a bit bigger than the skins I’ve handled and birds I’ve seen in the field. As you said, doesn’t help matters when different criteria are used for measurement. Cheers – Paul W.
Neil Shelley kindly brought the frozen Prion to my home this morning. In the hand, my initial ID from the photographs as a Slender-billed Prion was immediately confirmed by the slender nature of the bill with concave sides, no visible lamellae and black on undertail restricted to a narrow black line down the centre. But we still got out two sets of callipers, numerous books and papers and poured over them for well over an hour and compared the bill shape to numerous published diagrams, all of which pointed unquestionably to that conclusion. However, there was significant discrepancies between the references regarding bill measurements. Neil and I agreed on the following dimensions (mm) for his specimen, each of which are either slightly above or towards the upper limit for this species but too small for Antarctic Prion and are out of the ball-park for Salvin’s Prion. the very fresh specimen will be deposited at Museum Victoria, Melbourne. Bill length: chord of exposed culmen from tip to feathers 28.5, to skull 35. Bill depth: at point level with base of culmen, 11.4 and at immediately at front of nostrils 7.7, i.e. not at its shallowest point. Bill width: at point level with base of culmen, 11.4. It doesn’t help when several sources don’t advise or aren’t clear as to how or precisely where on the specimens their dimensions were measured. Some were evidently made at a non-conventional point. For instance in HANZAB Volume 1 bill depth for Prions is obviously at a point ahead of the nostrils contrary to the instruction given on page 37. I’m sure such advice is there somewhere but I couldn’t find it. Also typo’s such as that on page 540 under ‘Recognition’ for Slender-billed Prion, ‘Bill measurements average 26.5 mm long, 14 mm wide’! That ‘average’ is 1.5 mm larger than the widest reported therein!
Mike Carter 30 Canadian Bay Road Mount Eliza VIC 3930 Tel (03) 9787 7136