G’day everyone,
Can anyone point to some sites in and around Sydney that are great places for seeing Terns? I’ve spent some time at Longy and have seen plenty of Crested Terns there, with the odd Little, Caspian and White-fronted Terns seen from time to time, but would also like to know if there are other places in and around Sydney that are more reliable places to see these and other Tern species. I have planned a trip up to Newcastle, and also to Nowra in the next couple of weeks to look for other Terns too, so any help in finding some Terns in those areas, or places along the way would also be very much appreciated.
Also, I’m interesting in knowing if there are any places around Sydney where Silver Gulls can be reliably seen en masse, or if there are any known breeding colonies in Sydney. I’m hoping to find a place that might have hundreds of birds if that is possible. I remember seeing a couple breed at Homebush a few years ago, but not since. HANZAB mentions that they breed around Mascot. Would this still be correct?
Any help is much appreciated.
Regards, Mark ===============================
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Thanks for the replies Jeff and Nikolas.
It would certainly seem a difficult task indeed, but thank you both for sharing your information.
Regards, Mark
G’day Mark,
You won’t have any trouble finding adult Silver Gulls with only two mirrors around Sydney. It’s normal to find a percentage of them and you will even find a few in Tasmania although that population shows on average the most white in the wing for the species, if you were in Broome the majority of adults would show only two spots. To make a claim for scopulinus in Australia you will have to find an adult bird with only two mirrors the base of which are very square cut, right angled to the feather shaft, the bird will need to be noticeably small, it ideally should have a shorter more stubby bill and it will most likely have brighter, deeper red bill and legs at any time of the year compared to accompanying Silver Gulls. But these are only average differences and I could show you photos of birds from New Zealand that stray away from this look. What you need to find is all the features I have described above in the one individual. As you can see you have a very difficult task ahead of yourself with so much inherent variation in Australia and New Zealand. I would be looking for a bird that has squared off mirrors or is noticeably redder than all birds around it as the starting point and then look for the other features. It would need to be an absolutely perfect example of the above features before you could submit it to BARC. Probably would have been an easier task prior to European settlement when the total population of Gulls would have been smaller and more settled locally.
Cheers Jeff.
G’day Nikolas,
It’s been quite an exercise trying to look for 2 mirrors in Silver Gulls. I must say I found it very hard to be sure of birds in flight, so I adopted the approach of photographing everything and work it out at home! It worked better for me that way. I found that I saw a number of birds with 2 mirrors. Most of those still had some juvenile feathers, but the odd one looked to be an adult bird.
But that P8 seemed to be a hard feather to be sure about. Sometimes the mirror was hidden by P9 and it only showed in some photos but not others. In one bird both P8s was missing altogether!
I did notice that the mirror shape itself seemed to be different for some birds. Is there a reason for this?
Here are some of the images I managed to take of Silver Gulls with 2 mirrors.
An adult breeding bird, but I can’t see P8 http://bit.ly/qTqTqu
2 sub-adult birds. Are these 1st imm non-breeding? http://bit.ly/pF4pyr
Is this also a 1st imm non-breeding? http://bit.ly/niqTfy
2 adults, but I never got a look at P8. http://bit.ly/pPA97v
An adult in breeding, but the near feathers look worn and there is a slight white line. http://bit.ly/qnG0zE
I will be in Tassie at the end of the year, so I’ll be looking out for 2 mirrored adults whilst I’m down there. Hopefully I’ll get to see one.
Regards,
Mark
Sent: Tuesday, 28 June 2011 9:38 AM
Mark et al.,
If you happen to check out large Silver Gull flocks it may be a good idea to check carefully for Red-billed Gull(s). I think the lack of records for SG in NZ and RBG in OZ is rather due to neglect than to actual lack of these taxa.
This past Saturday during SOSSA’s Wollongong pelagic we had hundreds of Silver Gulls with us all they way out to the shelf break and back. Several times I got glimpses of a bird/birds with reduced white and more black in the primary tips. Tony Keene was able to take a few pictures of a gull with only two white mirrors. I haven’t had the time yet to carefully analyze the pictures but I had a quick skim through the HANZAB Silver Gull chapter (they treat scopulinus as a subspecies of novaehollandiae). I wasn’t able to find much on ID of adult birds. They say that juv. RBGs have a dark subterminal band to the tail whereas SGs don’t. Maybe I missed information because I didn’t have a proper read. Hadoram Shirihai’s Antarctic Wildlife book treats them as two species: SG usually three mirrors (but sometimes two!)/RBG two mirrors, SG paler than RBG, SG longer-billed and more slender-billed, SG slightly larger than RBG and the wing measurements were slightly different, too.
Not sure how to tell a two-mirrored SG with certainty from a RBG in the field!
Cheers,
Nikolas
Yes Alan, I should’ve said so in my original post. I took a photo of a similar looking juvenile in May last year, but from memory all the others I’ve seen in the past 2 years have either been adults or they looked similar to the second bird with less juvenile feathers.
Regards, Mark
Thanks everyone for your help recently in finding Gulls and Terns around Sydney. I came across 5 White-fronted Terns in differing stages of plumage at my local patch yesterday. I think 3 of them are clearly juveniles and the others I’m not sure about, but one of them looks very similar to the image of a first imm non-breeding as described in HANZAB.
Juvenile: http://bit.ly/k4fgyD 1st imm?: http://bit.ly/mofwN4
Regards, Mark
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Thanks everyone for the feedback. Does anyone have any ideas about reliable spots to go looking for Terns around the Sydney/Newcastle/Nowra area?
Regards, Mark
Thanks Tony and Jeff for the discussion, though I think trying to pick out a RBG from a SG is quite a bit beyond me. Especially if the bill size and shape varies within SG’s and SG’s can sometimes have 2 mirrors or 3 mirrors on their primaries. Though I did find this interesting webpage showing a comparison of the skulls of the 2 birds. http://www.shearwater.nl/index.php?file=kop98.php At least it’s given me more to keep an eye out for next time. For a common bird there is certainly lots of variety in them, like this image I took of this adult bird with a very dark eye. http://bit.ly/jg2XeJ
I was looking through the BirdingAus archives and found this old thread from 2003 on the same subject if people are interested in reading that one too. http://bioacoustics.cse.unsw.edu.au/archives/html/birding-aus/2003-07/msg004 28.html
Regards, Mark
Nikolas…When I visited NZ last year the first thing that struck me was a difference in the quality of the red colour in the bill and legs. Does HANZAB mention anything about this? It’s difficult to quantify, but I’m sure I wasn’t imagining it, and my photos bear it out. I would say RBG has a brighter, more crimson colour on the bill and legs. Cheers Steve Murray
Oops, mea culpa! I accidentally switched around the field marks of the juvs.
And yes, thanks for your comment, Jeff, I expected a lot of variation within populations. Tony didn’t only have a look at the numbers of mirrors but also their shape as well as the shape of the tongues. One of the papers Tony mentioned is Johnstone RE, Rec. West. Aust. Mus. 1982.10 (2): 133-165.
Cheers,
Nikolas
G’day Tony,
Interested to see the photos Tony if you haven’t already headed off to Adelaide. Three spots is the norm for adults in SE Australia however, the other northwest half of Australia is more likely to have two window spots, it is the norm in northern(including Darwin?) and north/west Australia. It wouldn’t be impossible to see an adult Silver in SE Aust with only two spots. Immatures in SE Aust, including 1A, also show only two spots. Scopulinus has a shorter bill, this would be the most obvious difference with adults that you should look for, but if you start looking you will note quite a lot of variation within your typical flock of Silvers. It’s the juv of scopulinus that lacks the tail band not the other way around, this is another good feature and would hold through to 1B 1A?.
Cheers Jeff.
I’ve done a fair bit of snooping around the literature and I’m almost certain it was a Red-billed Gull. I’m off with work for a few days to Adelaide and I’ll get some more work done on it. When I get back, I should be able to let everyone know what I’ve got and why I reckon it’s an RBG. Cheers!
Tony
Mark et al.,
If you happen to check out large Silver Gull flocks it may be a good idea to check carefully for Red-billed Gull(s). I think the lack of records for SG in NZ and RBG in OZ is rather due to neglect than to actual lack of these taxa.
This past Saturday during SOSSA’s Wollongong pelagic we had hundreds of Silver Gulls with us all they way out to the shelf break and back. Several times I got glimpses of a bird/birds with reduced white and more black in the primary tips. Tony Keene was able to take a few pictures of a gull with only two white mirrors. I haven’t had the time yet to carefully analyze the pictures butI had a quick skim through the HANZAB Silver Gull chapter (they treat scopulinus as a subspecies of novaehollandiae). I wasn’t able to find much on ID of adult birds. They say that juv. RBGs have a dark subterminal band to the tail whereas SGs don’t. Maybe I missed information because I didn’t have a proper read.Hadoram Shirihai’s Antarctic Wildlife book treats them as two species: SG usually three mirrors (but sometimes two!)/RBG two mirrors, SG paler than RBG, SG longer-billed and more slender-billed, SG slightly larger than RBG and the wing measurements were slightly different, too.
Not sure how to tell a two-mirrored SG with certainty from a RBG in the field!
Cheers,
Nikolas