Tag Archives: Enderby Island

Ian’s Bird of the Week – New Zealand Pipit

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Ian’s Bird of the Week – New Zealand Pipit 
~ by Ian Montgomery
Newsletter – 1/12/16
There are two ways to acquire photos of additional species to add to the website: one is to go out and photograph something new; the other is to sit at your computer and wait for the taxonomists to provide them via splits. I mentioned, in passing, the Eurasian and Pacific Wrens last week. This week we have the Australian and New Zealand Pipits, a split I discovered a week ago when revising the Pipit and Wagtail family page and switching the sequence from BirdLife International to the IOC. That split stirred vague memories of pipits on Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands group south of New Zealand and I dug out some neglected photos of New Zealand Pipits from my archives and published them on the website.
New Zealand Pipit (Anthus novaeseelandiae) by Ian

New Zealand Pipit (Anthus novaeseelandiae) by Ian

Pipits have been completely ignored as subjects for bird of the week because they aren’t, I don’t think, very interesting: they all look much the same – brown and streaked; they don’t behave in particular interesting ways; and they aren’t famous for the quality of their songs. So I was left the problem of finding a way of making them interesting. You could do a spot the difference quiz between the Australian  above, and the New Zealand below but even that is a bit limited in extent. The Australian is more buffish, the New Zealand more rufous; the New Zealand has more streaks on the flanks; if you had the birds in the hand you might notice that the Australian has a white belly, the New Zealand has a greyish one. That’s about it.
I could talk about their biology and show this photo of an adult feeding an insatiable fledgling, which was begging raucously for more food in another photo taken less than a second later. Instead, I decided this morning to Google the information contained in the sentence: “I took this photo of a New Zealand pipit (Anthus novaeseelandiae, J. F. Gmelin, 1789, Queen Charlotte Sound, South Island, New Zealand) on Enderby Island in November 2011”. Google led me on never-ending links of interesting information about the history of the Auckland Islands, voyages to Queen Charlotte Sound in the late 18th century, the work and publications of Johann Friedrich Gmelin and even to the novel Moby Dick* while I reminisced about the 2011 trip to the Sub-Antarctic Islands and dug out more photos of what we saw on Enderby Island. My task now is to distill all that stuff into a few sentences.
The Auckland islands are a rugged group of now uninhabited islands about 460km south of the South Island of New Zealand. Traces of Polynesian settlement dating back to the 13th century have been on Enderby Island, a small island about 5km long at the north eastern tip of the main island. They were rediscovered in 1806 by the whaling ship Ocean. Captain Bristow named the Islands after his friend the first Baron Auckland and Enderby Island after his boss Samuel Enderby, whose company owned the ship. The islands became an important sealing and whaling station, though by 1812 most of the New Zealand Sea Lions had been hunted and the focus switched to Campbell Island and Macquarie island farther south. There were several unsuccessful attempts at settlement later in the 19th century.
Most of the human activity on Enderby Island was at a sheltered bay called Sandy Cove on the south side of the island (below). That was where we landed and we hiked from there across to the north coast and then back along the coast in a clockwise direction, a distance of about 10km. Sandy Cove had lots of sea lions and Red-crowned Parakeets, strange to see on such a chilly windswept island.
I remember the last few kilometres along the south coast as being hard work wading through waist-deep tussocky grass but the wildlife along the way was wonderful and well worth the effort. In the tundra on the north coast there were New Zealand Snipe and Double-banded Plovers, while the cliffs on the north coast (below) had nesting Light-mantled Albatrosses. We watched their display flight  in the updrafts along the cliffs,a  veritable aerial ballet a deux, and could look down on other birds on their nests.
There were flightless Auckland Teal both along the coast and in pools of freshwater and we had to run the gauntlet of assertive male sea lions. We found that if you held your ground, they calmed down quite quickly and the following photo shows me making friends with one.
See? I’ve hardly mentioned pipits and, given the competition, it is surprising that I actually took any photos of them. Because various pipits all look much the same their taxonomy has long been, well, a mess.  There are – at the moment based on DNA studies – five similar species in Eurasian, Africa and Australasia that have in the past been treated as a single species. The other three are Richard’s pipit (central Asia), the African Pipit and the Paddyfield Pipit (south and southeast Asia). The first one to be named was a New Zealand specimen in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin, below, so according to the rules of taxonomic precedent that single species should have been novaeseelandiae.
Gmelin, 1748-1804, is best known for continuing to update and publish new volumes of the Systema Naturae after the death in 1778 of Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy. Here is the cover of the 1788 edition of Gmelin’s Volume I. Note that the classification is of the three natural kingdoms (Regna Tria Naturae) of animals, plants and minerals. This was in the days before anyone had to worry about evolution, and was all about managing the complexity of specimens of everything that were accumulating in vast numbers in museums, herbaria and other collections in Europe.
There were four levels of generalisation: classes, orders, genera and species. So the New Zealand Lark (as it was called then) belongs to the class Aves (birds), the order Passeres (sparrow-like), genus Alauda (larks) and species novae Zeelandiae (of Nova Seelandia). The system has proved remarkably robust. Class ‘Aves’ is still used for birds; ‘formes’ has been added to avian order names so Passeres survives as Passeriformes, Alauda is still used for true larks. The New Zealand Lark is now recognised as a pipit and has been moved to the Pipit genus Anthus. The main change to the classification structure is the addition of the Family level between order and genus. Pipits and Old World Wagtails are in the family Motacillidae and I was interested to find that the name Motacilla, the Wagtail genus, is to be found later in the same volume.
The volume makes interesting reading just at the level of habitats which hints at the enormity of the task faced by Linnaeus and Gmelin. The species above the New Zealand Lark is the ‘Cape Lark’ Alauda capensis from a specimen collected at the Cape of Good Hope (caput bonae spei). On just these two pages are species from Portugal, Argentina, Mongolia and Siberia and this on pages 798-799 of the volume on birds. I found another whole volume on worms and another on a subset of plants. Gmelin was primarily a botanist was published various books on plant and chemical poisons. On the zoological side he specialised in amphibians, reptiles and molluscs, so his publication of bird species was fairly incidental. Such was the all-encompassing nature of scholarship in those times.
Meanwhile, back at the website, progress continues. I’ve finished updating all the family pages and I’m now working through the 1,500 species and updating their pages to make them mobile-friendly. On a good day, I can do about 20 species. On the way, I’m adding new photos of previously prepared but not included photos and you can track this progress on the new Recent Additions page – the most recent photos are at the top of this page. This used to be a section on the Home Page which had become unmanageably large for mobiles and needed to be broken up. The Home Page now serves as a gateway to the rest of the website and to advise of updates. such as recent additions and the latest bird of the week.
I started by listing the two ways of getting new species for the website. I’m planning to do the other way next week, take a break from the website and go up to the Daintree River in search of nesting Black Bitterns. This is one of my bogey birds. I’ve seen them only flying away since the single occasion on which I saw one stationary at Chittaway Point on the Central Coast of New South Wales in the year 2000 before I took up serious bird photography with serious equipment. So this (scanned from film) is what I’m trying to improve on:
As usual I ask for your moral and spiritual support!
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Greetings
Ian
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*PS. In Moby Dick the fictitious ship Pequod of Nantucket met a whaling ship from London called the Samuel Enderby which had also encountered the white whale. The Samuel Enderby was a real ship belonging to the Enderby company and was one of three that arrived at Auckland Island in 1849 to attempt a new settlement with 150 settlers.
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Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Tel 0411 602 737 ian@birdway.com.au
Bird Photos http://www.birdway.com.au/
Recorder Society http://www.nqrs.org.au

Lee’s Addition:

Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows. (or Pipits) (Luke 12:6-7 KJV) (emphasis mine)

All work and no play is hard for anyone. We will be praying that you find that elusive Black Bittern. Then you can tell us all about them next.

Here are a few articles that tell about Carolus Linnaeus:

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Bird of the Week – Antarctic Tern

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Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata) by Ian (1)

Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata) by Ian (1)

Bird of the Week – Antarctic Tern ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter – 8-28-12

I’ve been adding photos from the recent Hong Kong, Finland, Ireland trip to the website and have encountered a few that are also on the Australian list such as the Arctic Tern. That was my initial choice for this week’s bird until I changed it to the closely related but lesser known Antarctic Tern as I took some photos of it on the Sub-Antarctic Islands trip last November that I would like to share. It is also on the Australian list and breeds at Macquarie and Heard Islands, though it is regarded as a very rare vagrant to the mainland.

We first encountered them at Snares, on the day after leaving Dunedin, first photo. Snares is a nature reserve and we weren’t allowed to land there but, as you can judge from the photo, weather conditions were good and we could get very close to some of the birds and mammals in the Zodiacs. This bird is in breeding plumage and the coral red bill and leg colour is sufficient to distinguish it from the similar breeding Common and Arctic Terns, both of which spend the northern winter in the southern hemisphere. These two breed in the northern hemisphere in the northern summer and both the time of the year and the location are also sufficient circumstantial evidence to eliminate birds of those species in breeding plumage. Apart from that, there are other subtler differences relating to size, plumage and proportions with the Antarctic Tern being both larger and stockier than the other two.

Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata) by Ian (2)

Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata) by Ian (2)

Some of these difference, such as the extent of transparency and dark webs in the flight feathers can only be seen in flight, second photo. If you’re not too worried about identification, then you can appreciate the beauty of all these elegant mid-sized terns and, given their graceful flight and forked tails, it’s no wonder that they have been called Sea Swallows. This photo was taken the following day at Enderby Island, one of the Auckland Islands. We were allowed to land there and it proved to be a fascinating place. At a small colony of nesting Antarctic Terns the bird in the third photo is just landing at its neat grassy nest to incubate the two eggs.

Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata) by Ian (3)

Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata) by Ian (3)

Both at Snares and on Enderby, there were other similar terns in non-breeding plumage, fourth photo, hanging around the edges of the breeding colony. This is where separation of the three species gets tough and is either a fascinating challenge or a nightmare for keen birders – depending on one’s attitude – and it’s no surprise that in the British Isles Common and Arctic Terns are collectively and wryly referred to as ‘Comic’ Terns. Birders have it fairly easy there and don’t have to worry about Antarctic Terns (we won’t even discuss the South American and Kerguelen Terns which complete the quintet). At Snares, we were tempted to identify this as an Arctic Tern. Arctic Terns, incidentally, easily win the prize for migration, breeding in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere and wintering on the coast of Antarctica.

Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata) by Ian (4)

Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata) by Ian (4)

It wasn’t until we got to Enderby and found more of these non-breeding birds in close proximity to breeding Antarctic Terns that we could compare the two sorts side by side and conclude that they were non-breeding Antarctic Terns. When I got home, the Handbook of Birds of the World, confirmed that in some places one year old birds, not old enough to breed, do occur at colonies. It may well be that the few records of Antarctic Terns for mainland Australia is more a reflection of the difficulties of separating non-breeding birds, that their actual rarity.

Back at the website, recent additional species from the trip that might be of interest include:

Best wishes
Ian

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Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Tel 0411 602 737 ian@birdway.com.au
Check the latest website updates:
http://www.birdway.com.au/#updates

Lee’s Addition:

and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens. (Genesis 1:20 ESV)

I am glad Ian figures these birds out for us. I have a real challenge just with the Terns I see at our shores. Like Ian tells us, the real ID problem comes when they are in their non-breeding plumages.

Thanks again, Ian, for sharing your birdwatching adventures with us.

Terns are put of the Laridae Family. Check out all of Ian’s Laridae – Sternini & Rynchopin Genus photos, then check out the Laridae – Gulls, Terns and Skimmers Family here.

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Ian’s Bird of the Week – Yellow-crowned Parakeet

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Yellow-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus auriceps) by Ian 1

Yellow-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus auriceps) by Ian 1

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Yellow-crowned Parakeet ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 3/8/12

Last December, the Red-crowned Parakeet was the bird of the week http://www.birdway.com.au/psittacidae/red_crowned_parakeet/index.htm . That was photographed on Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands one of the New Zealand Sub-Antarctic islands. Here is a close relative the Yellow-crowned Parakeet photographed on the same trip in Fiordland on the South Island. I’ve chosen it for this week’s bird, as I’m going to Norfolk Island tomorrow and I need your moral and spiritual support to help me photograph the endangered Norfolk Island or Tasman Parakeet.

In Fiordland, I camped at Cascade Creek camping site because it’s within striking distance of Milford Sound for the Fiordland Penguin and also because it’s right beside a nature trail through Antarctic Beech forest to Lake Gunn. This particular trail had been recommended as a good site for various native birds including the Yellow-crowned Parakeet. I found the Parakeets with relative ease as they chatter away when feeding or in flight. In the first photo, the bird is perched in a beech tree, and you can see its lovely, serrated, spoon-shaped leaves.
Yellow-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus auriceps) by Ian 2

Yellow-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus auriceps) by Ian 2

With a length of 23-25cm/9-10in, they’re smaller than the Red-crowned but otherwise very similar, apart from the colour of the crown and the lack of red behind the eye. In sunlight, the colours stand out well, as in the second photo, but in the shady areas of the forest they are well camouflaged and the presence of faded yellow leaves in both photos show well how the patches of colour in the plumage help to break up the outline of the bird.
Yellow-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus auriceps) by Ian 3

Yellow-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus auriceps) by Ian 3

The third photo shows another bird in a patch of sunlight on a very mossy tree stump. It’s a delightful forest, very Lord of the Rings, and it was easy to imagine encountering Treebeard along the way. It’s no wonder that the movie was filmed in New Zealand, and Tevora Lakes – not too far from here – was the location for Fangorn Forest, and you will, of course, remember that ‘Fangorn’ was the Sindarin for Treebeard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treebeard .
Yellow-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus auriceps) by Ian Middle Earth

Yellow-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus auriceps) by Ian Middle Earth

http://www.virtualoceania.net/newzealand/culture/lotr/Anyway, I’m wandering. The Norfolk Island trip is being organised by the same birders from Victoria that were my companions on the Sub-Antarctic trip. I’d originally turned down the invitation to join them on the grounds of extravagance so shortly after the other trip. We had such fun together, however, that I changed my mind, particular when their flights were re-routed through Brisbane, an easy, if horribly early, connection away from Townsville.

The Tasman/Norfolk Island Parakeet looks similar to the Red-crowned but yet smaller (21-26cm/8.3-10.2in). Like all the 10 members of this South Pacific genus (Cyanorhamphus – ‘blue bill’) it has suffered from the introduction of mammalian predators by Europeans, is classified as endangered and is restricted in distribution to the Norfolk Island National Park. Its numbers have increased recently from a dangerous low as a result of conservation efforts. There is talk of reintroducing it to Phillip Island, a small predator-freed island off Norfolk, and to Lord Howe, where a similar parakeet became extinct. It is thought to belong to the same species, hence the name Tasman Parakeet. So, wish me luck, keep your fingers crossed and transmit the same spiritual energy that is has been so successful before, and I’ll try to bring you the Tasman Parakeet as a future bird of the week.

Best wishes

Ian

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Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Preferred Email: ian@birdway.com.au
Website: http://www.birdway.com.au/index.php

Lee’s Addition:

Our prayers will go with you for safety and that you might find your next “Bird of the Week.” We like following your adventures into the wilds. Must be nice to have so many parakeets and parrots around.

Check out Ian’s many members of the Parrots and Allies – Psittacidae Family photos. He has quite a collection of them. He has almost 50 species there. There are 350 total members in the Parrot family. Ian has a few more trips to take. When he mentioned “in the shady areas of the forest they are well camouflaged and the presence of faded yellow leaves,” it reminds me of how well their creator provided for their protection.

There will be a shelter to give shade from the heat by day, and refuge and protection from the storm and the rain. (Isaiah 4:6 NASB)

More – Bird of the Week articles

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Ian’s Bird of the Week – New Zealand/Sub-Antarctic Snipe

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Subantarctic Snipe (Coenocorypha aucklandica) by Ian 1

Subantarctic Snipe (Coenocorypha aucklandica) by Ian 1

Ian’s Bird of the Week – New Zealand/Sub-Antarctic Snipe ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 2/29/12

My apologies for a late Bird of the Week. Lots of excuses are presenting themselves, as they do, but I won’t bore you with them. I’ve chosen another mostly good news conservation story from the Sub-Antarctic islands, the New Zealand or Sub-Antarctic Snipe. These are odd, dumpy, almost tail-less little snipe – length 23cm/9in – that occur now only on some of the islands south of New Zealand: Snares, Auckland Islands, Antipodes Islands and Campbell Island with a closely related species on Chatham Island.

We found them on Enderby Island, one of the Auckland Islands group, where the nominate subspecies (aucklandica) occurs. With their relatively short, curved bill they don’t look like your average snipe and they don’t behave like one either. Like the Auckland and Campbell Islands Teals they’re fairly confiding and allow close approach but, unlike the Teal, they can still fly, though are very reluctant to do so. When disturbed – and you have to nearly step on them to do that – they creep away mouse-like through the thick vegetation that they prefer and disappear with relative ease. Perhaps crake- or rail-like would be closer to the mark and the curved bill reminded me of the longer-billed rails such as the Virginia Rail http://www.birdway.com.au/rallidae/virginia_rail/source/virginia_rail_110552.htm .

Subantarctic Snipe (Coenocorypha aucklandica) by Ian 2

Subantarctic Snipe (Coenocorypha aucklandica) by Ian 2

By day they stay under cover, only venturing out onto more open areas at night. They feed on a wide variety of invertebrates that they the find by deeply probing the peaty island soil. The male, apparently, has a distinctive territorial call uttered at dawn and dusk and rendered as ‘queeyoo queeyoo’, and the extinct Stewart Island race is supposed to be responsible for the Maori legend of the hakawai or or hokioi, a frightening creature that called only at night (Heather & Robertson, Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand). The males also perform a nocturnal display flight, making, like other snipe, a humming sound by vibrating the tail feathers, which, given the short tails of this species, one can imagine as being very high-pitched.

Subantarctic Snipe (Coenocorypha aucklandica) by Ian 3

Subantarctic Snipe (Coenocorypha aucklandica) by Ian 3

The third photo shows a pair of the snipe sneaking past the abundant yellow-flowered Bulbinella or Ross Lily, one of the characteristic, so-called ‘megaherbs’ of these islands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbinella_rossii.

The good part of the news is that although the New Zealand Snipe became extinct on the main islands following the arrival of the Pacific Rat with the Maoris a thousand years ago and the recent extinction of two races on Stewart Island and Little Barrier Island (the latter, ironically as a result of the introduction there of the Weka http://www.birdway.com.au/rallidae/weka/index.htm ), the remaining races seem to be doing quite well with a total population estimated at 34,000, of which two thirds occur on the smaller of the Auckland Islands, including Enderby.

Yet another race was thought to have become extinct on Campbell Island after the brig Perseverance, responsible for discovery of the island in 1810, was wrecked there in 1828 leaving the usual legacy of rats. This race remained undescribed and unseen until a small population was discovered on an almost inaccessible, nearby, little island called Jacquemart in 1997 during a search for the Campbell Island Teal. Rats were eliminated on the relatively huge – 11,000 hectare – main island in 2001 and the snipe have recolonised it from Jacquemart unaided. The race is now called, paradoxically, perseverence. Some of the more intrepid members of our party found some snipe on an arduous walk there in wet conditions on our last day. I’d had enough of boggy, wet walks through unrelenting waist-deep tussock grass by then and didn’t join them. Alas!

To make amends for the late BoftW, here is a non-bird of the week, Lumholtz’s Tree Kangaroo.

Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo by Ian

Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo by Ian

This obliging animal made a greatly-appreciated appearance in the middle of a Birds Australia North Queensland committee meeting 11 days ago when we were just about to debate a controversial agenda item. The meeting was being held at a member’s house in rainforest on the Atherton Tableland. A delightful interlude with this placid animal led to a very harmonious and well-mannered debate. There’s an obvious lesson there for choosing a suitable venue for meetings.

Best wishes
Ian

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Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Phone: 0411 602 737 +61-411 602 737
Preferred Email: ian@birdway.com.au
Website: http://birdway.com.au

Lee’s Addition:

He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the service of man, That he may bring forth food from the earth, (Psalms 104:14 NKJV)

Another neat bird and adventure by Ian. The Tree Kangaroo is also an adorable addition. We have the Wilson’s Snipe in this area, which is the only snipe seen by us. I am glad Ian let’s in on his adventures around the world. Better him having his “walks through unrelenting waist-deep tussock grass” than us. Thanks, Ian, for sparing us.

See all of Ian’s Birds of the Week – Click Here

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Ian’s Bird of the Week – Red-crowned Parakeet

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Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) by Ian 1

Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) by Ian 1

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Red-crowned Parakeet ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 12/20/11

Christmas is nearly on us, so a bird in the Christmas colours of red and green seems appropriate. Here is the Red-crowned Parakeet, one of the relatively few non-seabirds encountered on the trip to the Sub-Antarctic Islands.

We found these birds at several locations on Enderby Island, one of the smaller of the Auckland Islands and the first site at which we actually landed after leaving Dunedin. Enderby Island is mainly basalt with rocky cliffs, as in the second photo, and it reminded me very much of St Paul Island in the Bering Sea that I visited three years ago. On both the vegetation is mainly tundra, though unlike the treeless St Paul Enderby has patches of very gnarled dwarf rata forest.
Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) by Ian 2

Enderby Island by Ian 2

The Parakeets feed mainly on the ground and we found them both on the tundra and in the forest. They are herbivorous, and the bird in the first photo is feeding on the dense understory of the forest – the third photo shows the same bird in close-up eating very fine shoots and leaves.
Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) by Ian 3

Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) by Ian 3

The fourth photo shows a different bird feeding on the flower-heads of small herbs growing on the tundra near the beach where we landed.
Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) by Ian 4

Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) by Ian 4

I’m used to seeing parrots in more tropical locations, so it was a startling to see these small (25-28cm/10-11in long) elegant parrots in such a cold and rugged environment. They are obvious tough little birds, though their confiding habits, ground-feeding life-style and choice of low nesting sites makes them very vulnerable to introduced predators such as feral cats,rats and, in New Zealand, stoats. The Red-crowned Parakeet used to widespread throughout New Zealand but is now rare or extinct on the two main islands, though it survives well on Stewart and other offshore islands. As you can judge from the photos, the birds are very approachable and took little notice of us.
On the website, there are now nine species of penguins http://www.birdway.com.au/spheniscidae/index.htm and thirteen species of albatrosses http://www.birdway.com.au/diomedeidae/index.htm . The additional species of albatrosses include ones that were treated as sub-species by Christidis and Boles, 2008, but are now recognised as full species by Birdlife International and the IOC.
I wish you a safe and happy Christmas and best wishes
Ian

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Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Phone: 0411 602 737 +61-411 602 737
Preferred Email: ian@birdway.com.au
Website: http://birdway.com.au

Lee’s Addition:

Thanks again, Ian, for sharing your great adventures. This parakeet, indeed, looks decked out for the colors of Christmas. Would be pretty to have a flock of them perching on a Christmas Tree. Merry Christmas to you, Ian, and our readers.

Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11 NKJV)

Check out Ian’s other Parrots and Parakeets at his Parrots & Allies Psittacidae Family page. Our Birds of the World Psittacidae Family page has more Parrot and Parakeet photos.

Ian’s Other Birds of the Week

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Ian’s Bird of the Week – Light-mantled Albatross

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Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 1

Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 1

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Light-mantled Albatross ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 12/1/11

We arrived in Hobart today at the end of successful visit to the Sub-antarctic Islands between New Zealand and Australia. We had a lot of very rough weather in the Southern Ocean but the weather was kinder to us at the various destinations and we managed make all the planned landings (Auckland Islands, Campbell and Macquarie Islands) and view the Snares from the zodiacs (where actual landings are not permitted). I managed to photograph most of the species on my target list and the highlight for most of us was Macquarie Island and its four nesting species of penguin.

As the last Bird of the Week was the Yellow-eyed Penguin, I’ve chosen an albatross, the Light-mantled (Sooty) Albatross, for this week and will return to penguins later. This was the Albatross that I most wanted to see and also very popular with everyone else. My interest in it had been aroused when I’d heard it likened to a Siamese cat, a seal point in particular. The comparison is apt given the chocolate brown head and latte-coloured body, and the silky texture of the plumage is quite feline in appearance. The white partial eye-ring is striking and sets off the dark head colour very well.
Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 2

Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 2

We saw Light-mantled Albatrosses quite frequently until we got close to Tasmania, encountering them first and best on Enderby Island, one of the Auckland Islands, as in the first photo but also at sea and at Macquarie Island as in the second photo. Macquarie Island is administratively part of the State of Tasmania even though it is a long way away and, as one of the Kiwis on board pointed out, geographically part of New Zealand. The Albatrosses were nesting on Enderby Island and it was here that we saw pairs indulging in their beautiful courtship flights, quite an aerial ballet, as in the third photo.
Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 3

Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 3

At this point, I though that the comparison with Siamese Cats broke down. I used to have a pair and. when the female was on heat, her behaviour was anything but elegant; demented would have been more like it.
Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 4

Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 4

Some pairs were already nesting and incubating eggs. They chose small platforms on quite rocky cliffs and often nested in close proximity to each other, as in the fourth photo. Light-mantled are quite small by albatross standards, measuring about 84cm/33in in length with a wingspan of 215cm/85in. Their range is circumpolar in the colder waters of the Southern Ocean and are seen only rarely in the waters of mainland Australia and Tasmania proper.
Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 5

Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) by Ian 5

On close inspection of the head of a Light-mantled, as in the last photo, the eyes are bluish and, as a final touch, the pale stripe on the bill is also blue. Yes, I know, same colour scheme as a Siamese Cat!
During the rougher parts of the voyage I had the opportunity to work on some of the photos and I have added the following species to the website: Snares, Fiordland and Yellow-eyed Penguins:
Best wishes
Ian
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Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Phone: 0411 602 737 +61-411 602 737
Preferred Email: ian@birdway.com.au
Website: http://birdway.com.au

Lee’s Addition:

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them. (Proverbs 20:12 KJV)

What an absolutely neat looking bird. I love that eye ring. Makes the eyes very expressive. Looks like they built nests of mud.

It will be interesting to see what other neat birds that Ian has found on this trip. Not so sure I would have enjoyed those rough seas.

The Albatross are found in the Diomedeidae Family of the Procellariiformes Order. That order includes Petrel, Shearwater, Storm Petrel and Diving Petrel families.

Check out:

Ian’s Albatross Photos

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