All, Back in Oct a Jack Shick took a photo of a cookilara taken off Lord Howe on the way to Ball’s Pyramid. At the time he thought it might have been a Gould’s. I was sent a copy by a friend who thought it may be something else…I believe it to be a Pycroft’s. While living in NZ I spent a fair bit of time trying to suss out the differences between Cook’s and Pycroft’s and this bird is a very strong candidate for the latter. I have seen about a hundred Pycroft’s and many hundred Cooks and it has all the indicative features that I am familiar with for Pycroft. There are many that say these two species can’t be separated at sea but I believe that there is a bit of sliding scale with individuals on the far end being distinctive and not too difficult to separate. Because this would be a significant record for AU let me toss it into the public forum for debate. I am in no way an expert but a few mates and I came up with some rules of thumb that were good ways to separate the two. Of these, the features which stand out to me are: 1. Strong dark grey hood and distinct eye-line 2. Deep, thick and distinct mark under the eye which is greater behind than in front of the eye 3. Unbroken underwing carpal bar 4. And most distinctive which I have never seen published anywhere is a slight extension of the central tail feathers on Pycroft’s vs Cooks. I have asked Tom Tarrant to post this for me at the Australasian Bird Image Data Base. Please find the image at the following link: http://www.aviceda.org/abid/newimages.php?action=latestimages&p=1&pagesize=1 Cheers,Roger
Roger McNeill Samford Valley, SEQ
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