Hi Anthea and all at B-A,
I had a similar but different experience, when traveling back to Australia from Cape Town by ship. After 3 days of listening to Hartlaub’s Gulls, *Chroicocephalus hartlaubii,* in Cape Town harbour (In some references, Hartlaubs Gull is a race of Silver Gull and in others it is a separate species*), the next birds I heard calling were the Silver Gulls in Freemantle Harbour. Between Cape Town and Freemantle I had heard no bird calls of any species. At the time I thought the calls of the Freemantle bird’s were very similar to the Cape Town bird’s call, and definitely different from the east-coast Australia Silver Gulls that I know so well.
Supposedly, according to some references, there are three races of “Silver Gull” in Australia: [*C.s. novaehollandiae*] S Australia. [*C.s. gunni*] Tasmania. [*C.s. forsteri*] N Australia, New Caledonia & Loyalty Is.
I have no idea if there is a difference in call between the *Chroicocephalus * gulls of s-w Australia and those in n-w Australia because I have never done a flight between the two to test, nor have I read any reports on the matter. I do think, however, that our “common old Sea Gull” has many variations.
cheers
Jenny
* http://merseybirders.webs.com/documents/gull-reference-list.pdf
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 10:39 AM, brian fleming
> While we’re on the subject of Silver Gulls, on past visits to northern > Australia (Broome, Darwin etc) I noticed that the calls of Silver Gulls > seemed noticeably different to what I hear in Victoria. I had no recording > equipment and could not say what the difference was. > I believe I heard the northern type of call in Brisbane and Fraser Island. > I have seen no reference to this in any books available to me. > > Anthea Fleming > > > > > On 5/07/2011 9:56 AM, Elizabeth Shaw wrote: > >> Does this mean I should be looking at Silver Gulls more closely? I >> thought they were an easy bird to identify – and they’re everywhere here! >> Elizabeth Shaw >> Phillip Island >> Victoria >> —– Original Message —– From: “David James”
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