Dom Serventy’s 1972 paper The Shearwaters of Shark Bay WA. Emu 72 175-177 stated that 20 to 30% of the small Shark Bay breeding colony of Wedge-tails were pale morph birds, not 25% of all Wedge-tails in WA waters.!
Neil Cheshire ===============================
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Yes, apparently White-phase Wedge-tailed Shearwaters are unknown at much larger colonies north and south of Shark Bay and only recorded at sea within a 200-300 kilometre radius of Shark Bay (Wooler et al. 2005). Here are a few papers on this topic (including Serventy 1972):
Serventy D.L. (1972): The Shearwaters of Shark Bay, WA. Emu 72: 175-177. Lane S.G. (1972): White-phased Wedge-tailed Shearwater on North Solitary Island, NSW. Emu 72: 184-185. Wooller R.D., Bradley J.S. & Powell C.D.L. (2005): Plumage dimorphism in Wedge-tailed Shearwaters Puffinus pacificusin Shark Bay, Western Australia. Corella29: 49-50. Davis W.E. Jr. (2006): Plumage dimorphism in Wedge-tailed Shearwaters Puffinus pacificus in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Journal of Field Ornithology 77: 92. (This article is a summary of Wooler et al. 2005) Cheers,
Nikolas
Yep, I realise that. My poin was that I’ve read in a couple of books the 25% figure quoted for WA – e.g. my Morecombe field guide (handbook) states “light morph rare in E Aust., but about 25% of population in WA”. I’ve often wondered where this figure comes from as I’ve only ever seen one pale bird off Perth and the south-west, despite having seen thousands of Wedgies. Having been made aware of the results of Serventy, my suspicion is that data from the Shark Bay population (either in Serventy’s paper or from some other source) has been misunderstood or mistakenly thought to hold for all WA Wedgies, and this is the source of the field guide claims
John
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