The weekend before last word started coming in from Eaglehawk Neck in Tasmania of what was perhaps the most spectacular pelagic in southern waters (if not all of Australia) ever! It started with rumors of several Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses, numbers of Blue Petrel, Grey Petrel and other goodies on the Saturday and was compounded with stories of the “holy trinity” of albatrosses – Sooty, Light-mantled Sooty and Grey-headed – together with countless Blue Petrels, Grey Petrels, White-headed Petrels, Fairy, Slender-billed, Antarctic and Salvin’s Prions on the Sunday. Come Monday morning I started formulating a plan to organise a pelagic out of Eaglehawk Neck the following weekend (last weekend). I called Rohan Clarke on Monday morning – not one much inclined towards hyperbole, I could still hear the excitement in his voice when I asked him about the weekend just gone. I broached the subject of a potential pelagic the following weekend and he told me that Daniel Mantle (currently ex-Perth) was in the midst of organising a follow-up pelagic, so with a quick call to him I secured spots for Ruth and I on the trip for both days. As it transpired, I had forgotten that we had a family function on the Saturday evening back in Melbourne, so we had to pull out of the Sunday trip – allowing a couple of others to take our spots. Anyway, we headed down to Tasmania on Friday night full of excitement, enthusiasm and above all an expectation couldn’t be supressed. By 6:10am on Saturday we were in the restaurant of the Lufra Hotel having breakfast. Within a couple of minutes Christian Haass (Nikolas’s brother) had appeared for breakfast – it’s a small world, we met Christian on a Debi Shearwater pelagic out of Monterey Bay, California last year – so imagine the surprise on his face when he shows up at a small hotel in Tasmania and sees us again! Before long pelagic regulars Scott Baker and Kevin Bartram were there and shortly Dan made an appearance – without a doubt there was a discernible “buzz” in the air as we chatted about what we might see. By 6:45 we were all on the jetty and a short time later on board and heading out of the harbour. So far everything seemed normal – Kelp Gulls and Silver Gulls in the harbour, the odd Little-pied and Black-faced Cormorant too. As we headed towards the Hippolyte Rocks there was the occasional Common Diving-petrel, the usual Gannets putting on a show, some Crested Terns and even a single Shy Albatross following the boat. At the Hippolytes there were the usual number of Black-faced Cormorants, Silver and Kelp Gulls, lots of Australian Fur Seals – even a juvenile Sea Eagle. Once we were past the rocks and heading out to sea things changed – well, actually they didn’t change – the flocks of Sooty Albatrosses, Blue Petrels and Salvin’s Prions totally failed to materialise. The hordes of White-headed Petrels and Grey-headed Albatrosses had gone elsewhere. The flocks of birds that we had noticed on the horizon when we were at the rocks turned out to be Crested Terns in a feeding frenzy and the inevitable queue of Short-tailed Shearwaters that we crossed on the way out and back in again. What a difference a day makes, as the words to the song go – or in this case, what a difference a week makes. Weather conditions last weekend were similar to the weekend before. The sea temperature was about the same – but there the similarities ended. In my experience it was perhaps the quietest pelagic I can remember ever being on – both in terms of variety and number of individual birds. Don’t get me wrong, we had a few good birds – Wandering Albatross (gibsoni) and Southern Royal Albatross – a couple of Northern Giant Petrels, a single Cape Petrel and a single Grey-backed Storm-petrel. I think, however, that the highlight was Christian yelling when a White-chinned Petrel came in – a new bird for him (hardly surprising since he lives in Germany and hasn’t been on very many, if any, Southern Ocean pelagics!) For those that are interested, I have posted some images of some of the birds that we saw to my website: http://paul.angrybluecat.com/Trips-and-Locations/2013/Eaglehawk-Neck-Tas-Sep -2013 Just don’t go looking for any mega-rarities! Paul Dodd Docklands, Victoria =============================== 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 ===============================
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