Highlights from the Portland (Victoria) pelagic on Sunday

Hi birders, This isn’t the trip report from last Sunday’s Portland (Victoria) pelagic – Chris Lester will post that shortly, I’m sure. For those not on Facebook, you may not be across the news of the sightings. After what we all thought was quite an ordinary day at sea, we were lucky enough to have an adult Salvin’s Albatross fly in at our third berley point – great views were had by all participants and the bird quickly became (by far) the most photographed bird of the trip. Yesterday evening, Tim Bawden loaded a selection of his photos onto Facebook, quite innocently misidentifying a tern that we’d seen as a White-fronted Tern. We had, in fact, seen quite a number of White-fronted terns at sea that day – somewhat unusually. Within a minute or two a number of the seabird experts immediately identified the bird as a juvenile ANTARCTIC TERN! Funnily enough, Scott Baker and I had been discussing the terns that we’d seen, and I think we’d both made a mental note to review the photos when we got back to land, thinking that one of the birds may have been a wayward Arctic Tern because of the shorter bill and translucent secondaries. I had given it no further thought, as I’m sure no-one else had, and had been busily processing and publishing pictures of the Salvin’s Albatross as I was sure that they were the images that people would want to see. According to the experts, though, for our bird to be an Arctic Tern, it would be in reverse breeding cycle, making it a highly unusual bird. Coupled with the black trailing edge to wings the only possibility was Antarctic Tern! As far as I know, Tim’s images are only available on Facebook, but I have managed to publish my images to my web site as well as to Facebook: http://paul.angrybluecat.com/Trips-and-Locations/2015/Portland-Pelagic-Jun-2 015/ Here’s a shorter version of the link in case the birding-aus mailing-list server truncates this one: http://bit.ly/1Ldz1aj I also quickly reviewed Ruth’s images last night and it would appear that she has photographs of at least two, possibly three individual Antarctic Terns. There was one definite Antarctic Tern in the first flight of terns that came through and another bird that looks like a possibility. Then there was another definite Antarctic Tern in the second flight of terns – around 20 minutes later, by my count (but Tim says 40 minutes later). Far from being an ordinary trip, this now makes it one of the most extraordinary (and successful) Portland pelagics of recent years! Paul Dodd Docklands, Victoria