Seabirds in the Hunter River during recent East Coast Low

Hi all, I’m sure you would have heard about the severe weather event that the Hunter and Central Coast regions experienced this week, which pushed south yesterday to Sydney and the Illawarra. Normally, during and after such an event, keen seawatchers would be out scoping the ocean for seabirds forced closer to shore. A good recent example of this was ex-tropical Cyclone Oswald in late Jan 2013, when many species of (mainly warm water) seabirds were seen off the NSW coast. In Newcastle this included 100’s of Sooty Terns, a Bridled Tern, Black and Brown Noddies, Lesser Frigatebirds and Procellariiformes such as White-necked and Tahiti Petrels, Streaked and Buller’s Shearwaters amongst numerous others. Some of the terns and frigatebirds were seen inside Newcastle Harbour and there were examples of seabirds blown well inland (a good example of that was the Bulwer’s Petrel found near Toowoomba during Oswald). I ventured out for a brief time on Tuesday, during the ‘peak’ of the low pressure system (when I say ‘peak’, it lasted for at least 24 hours) to investigate a report from local birder Ian Benson that one, possibly 2 Gould’s Petrels were flying around near Stockton Bridge in the Hunter River’s North Arm. He also reported Short-tailed Shearwaters and Fairy Prions. It was a surreal scene, much akin to what we see on a “good” pelagic, with seabirds flying into the wind along a stretch of the river, mostly upstream of Stockton Bridge. Conditions were atrocious to say the least and the only effective way of observing was from within the vehicle. In between rain squalls I was able to take some photos, which can be seen at the link below. The most Gould’s I saw on a single scan was 3 birds, though I strongly suspect that there were more than that as it was very difficult to see all birds flying around. I then made the somewhat daunting journey to Fort Drive to look over the ocean. All I could see through the rain was white water and massive waves. I did not see a single bird of any description. Returning to the harbour, I saw more Gould’s Petrels and many more Short-taileds before the biggest surprise when I saw one, then two storm-petrels. I was very distant to them and was being battered by rain coming in sideways to the shelter I was in (plus I was the only person within cooee, which was a bit disconcerting!) and managed some pretty ordinary images, but they clearly show a White-faced and Fregetta sp. storm-petrels which does not look too bad for a White-bellied. http://s178.photobucket.com/user/Brewerbackpacker/library/East%20Coast%20Low%20Hunter%20River%20seabirds%2021%20April%202015  Although it was a brief one (I had very little time) the experience will live with me forever. “Surreal” is the best word I can find for it. I am very curious about other people’s experiences with similar events – not seabirds blown closer to shore during extreme weather and seawatched, but actually being observed within an estuary after where they presumably rode out the storm and then returned to sea. A White-faced Storm-petrel was found along the Hunter River yesterday and has been taken into care but that is the only recovery I’m aware of. The fact that some of these were Procellariiformes that are normally extremely rarely seen from shore (especially the Fregetta stormy), being inside a river is remarkable. The Gould’s upstream of Stockton Bridge were about 8km up the river. As opposed to Oswald, when birds were blown south from lower latitudes and remained in the area for several days, there was not a single bird to be seen yesterday (when conditions calmed) in any of these places except for resident gulls and terns. People were in position at first light and nothing was seen during the day. Virtually nothing could be seen over the ocean (and several people were looking). I note that a Brown Noddy and White Tern were seawatched off Kurnell yesterday though. I would like to document this event locally, so am keen to hear from others who have had similar experiences. ThanksMick