I’ve belatedly woken up the fact that there have been a number of records for Common Diving-Petrels off NSW this winter, from Sydney, Wollongong and Eden pelagics. I haven’t seen this sp and had assumed it was very rarely spotted off NSW in July/August. Is this year a particualrly good one for reocrds off NSW? Any theories why? And of course I was too lazy/disorganised to get myself on a pelagic, so will have to hope for another good year soon. — John Leonard =============================== 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 ===============================
Hi John, The majority of CDPs in NSW was seen from land (sometimes triple-digit numbers; see Eremaea/Birdline NSW) – way more than on the pelagics you mentioned. This makes sense since CDP is more an inshore than a true pelagic species. Thus, the route of pelagic trips is usually perpendicular to the migration route of CDPs resulting in lower numbers compared to a sea-watch. The influx of CDPs coincided with an influx of large numbers of Fairy Prions (as far North as southern QLD). So, a combination of SW cold fronts in the Southern Ocean and potentially lack of food in their usual foraging areas may have driven them north along the NSW coast. See here for sightings in NSW this year: http://www.eremaea.com/BirdlineSpeciesArchive.aspx?CommonNamesSet=1&Birdline=2&From=20130101&To=20130927&MonthStart=1&MonthEnd=12&Species=208 Cheers, Nikolas —————- Nikolas Haass nhaass@yahoo.com Brisbane, QLD ________________________________ From: John Leonard < calyptorhynchus@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, September 27, 2013 9:44 AM I’ve belatedly woken up the fact that there have been a number of records for Common Diving-Petrels off NSW this winter, from Sydney, Wollongong and Eden pelagics. I haven’t seen this sp and had assumed it was very rarely spotted off NSW in July/August. Is this year a particualrly good one for reocrds off NSW? Any theories why? And of course I was too lazy/disorganised to get myself on a pelagic, so will have to hope for another good year soon. — John Leonard =============================== To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) http://birding-aus.org =============================== =============================== To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) http://birding-aus.org ===============================