Cape Naturaliste seawatch – 11/09/13

Hi all, An excellent day of seawatching today with Dan Mantle at Cape Naturaliste (near Busselton, SW WA for B-Aussers). Excellent shearwater passage, I suspect our counts are probably an underestimate for all three species. A feeding frenzy of a thousand or so birds comprising all three shearwater species, plus a few gannets and terns was also everpresent just south of the point. Overall albatross count was the highest I’ve had for Cape Naturaliste ListWandering Albatross [sp.] (1 – closest to Plumage C in Onley & Scofield)Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross (80+)Black-browed Albatross (1 younger bird)Shy Albatross (11 – 4 adults, 7 young birds with darkish heads, 1 very dark)Northern Giant-Petrel (5)Giant-Petrel sp. (7)Great-winged Petrel (2+)Soft-plumaged Petrel (13)Flesh-footed Shearwater (1,000+)Wedge-tailed Shearwater (400+)Hutton’s Shearwater (4,000+)Arctic Jaeger (1)Crested Tern (50+)Fairy Tern (2)Australasian Gannet (100+)Silver Gull (10-15)Pied Cormorant (1) Also Humpback Whale (3)Southern Right Whale (3, including a breaching show from a mother and calf) Cheers,John =============================== To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au http://birding-aus.org ===============================