A request for Melbourne and Victorian members.
We’ve received a report of a juvenile White-tailed Tropicbird on Brighton Pier last Wednesday.
This is a very rare sighing of the species in Victoria and I wondered whether anyone else has seen the bird or recorded them in the past in Victoria?
Please contact me directly including your thoughts on the sighting.
cheers, Martin
Martin O’Brien Wildlife Biologist – Threatened Species & Communities Section Department of Sustainability and Environment 2/8 Nicholson St., East Melbourne 3002 VICTORIA
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Comments
5 responses to “RFI Tropicbirds in Victoria”
Hi All
Red-tailed Tropic Bird obs for Kangaroo Island off S coast of SA are as follows: one March-April 1966 and again one during May-June 1967. Both seen at Flour Cask Bay/Pelican Lagoon area of E KI.
Cheers
Chris Baxter
I also found another historic record for Red-tailed, not White-tailed. Reid, Shaw, Wheeler (1975) in ‘Birds of Victoria: Rare Species’ note an inland record of Red-tailed Tropicbird (1945) at Giilford, near Daylesford. Cheers, Tim Dolby ________________________________________ Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2011 10:13 AM
I pressed send before I’d finished my previous response to this question.
In addition to the records I mentioned there is another at least potential record. It is detailed in
Peter, J. (2004), ‘Beachcast Seabirds Recovered at Zeally Bay, Torquay, Victoria, 1991-2003’, Australian Field Ornithology, 21, 1-20.
On 21 April 2000 a single long central tail feather of an adult White-tailed Tropicbird was found there! It would seem that there is a concentration of records in April.
Mike Carter 30 Canadian Bay Road Mount Eliza VIC 3930 Tel (03) 9787 7136
I pressed send before I’d finished my previous response to this question.
In addition to the records I mentioned there is another at least potential record. It is detailed in
Peter, J. (2004), ‘Beachcast Seabirds Recovered at Zeally Bay, Torquay, Victoria, 1991-2003’, Australian Field Ornithology, 21, 1-20.
On 21 April 2000 a single long central tail feather of an adult White-tailed Tropicbird was found there! It would seem that there is a concentration of records in April.
Mike Carter 30 Canadian Bay Road Mount Eliza VIC 3930 Tel (03) 9787 7136
There have been a few more sightings than you list Tim. Roy Wheeler listed two records of Red-tailed Tropicbirds in his Handlist of the Birds of Victoria published by VORG in 1967 but none of White-tailed. I’ve seen one Red-tailed from Cape Schanck since that was published. Emison et al. 1987 Atlas of Victorian Birds list one record of Red-tailed during the first Atlas. They give the status of White-tailed Tropicbird as rare vagrants to pelagic waters off Victoria and list three records during the period of the first Atlas. A ship I was on enroute to Sydney flushed one off the sea in Bass Strait on 22 March 1987 south of Lakes Entrance. There was a spate of records in Eastern Australia at that time following a cyclone including one ashore at Lakes Entrance on 15 March 1978 that later died. Since the Brighton Pier report followed shortly after the one that crash-landed in the main street of Leongatha I think that it possibly a good record.
Mike Carter 30 Canadian Bay Road Mount Eliza VIC 3930 Tel (03) 9787 7136
The BA Atlas has two records of White-tailed Tropicbird in Victoria – one from the Gippsland Lakes, and another from Mallacoota. I have also heard of an unconfirmed record of White-tailed Tropicbird seen near the Victorian coast on the ferry over to Tasmania. On the southern NSW coast they’re occasionally seen on pelagics. I’m not sure if they’ve been seen on any Eden trips, but they have been seen on a trip run out of Ulladulla.
Interestingly there are quite a few Australian inland records of White-tailed Tropicbird, for example near Griffith (450 km from the coast, I assume along the Murrumbidgee) and one near Gilgandra north of Dubbo. More recently there was a bird seen in Roma, Queensland (400 km from the coast). Similarly Red-tailed Tropicbird seem to turn up inland with some regularity, with the most inland record coming from Bourke in NSW (800 km from the sea, presumably following flowing the Darling River). As far as I can see there are no Victorian Red-tailed Tropicbird reports, although there is one from over the border in sunny South Australia.
Also just to give everyone an update the status of the White-tailed Tropicbird found recently in Leongatha – it was released by an animal carer (Michelle Thomas) in Merimbula, Saturday 21 May 2011. She said the bird flew quickly out to sea. [For the record there’s a recent record of a White-tailed Tropicbird from Merimbula – flying quickly out to sea, 21 May 2011.]
Cheers,
Tim Dolby