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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

3 Gulf Stream Pelagic birds between Bermuda and USA (1 Viewer)

stephennj said:
I am still debating as to which birds to actually add to my lifelist from this set.
I spent quite a bit of time with the bins on these birds but as you all know they are new to me and I had no experienced birders around to help.

As I was birding and before looking at the "snapshots" I was confident I was seeing Cory's and Greater/Manx Shearwaters. I realize photo 3 is a lost cause but I would like to get a more definite decision on bird #2... If possible .
Click to expand...

I agree that Manx looks like a good fit for #2, but it is an uncommon bird in southern waters--probably the least common of the regularly occurring shearwaters, so I personally would be hesitant based on the photo alone. (As was suggested above, I'm not sure Cory's can be ruled out, for example). You may have seen more. Manx is referred to as one of the small "black and white" shearwaters, because that's how it looks at a distance. If your confident that's what you observed--a bird that was uniformly very dark above and smaller than a Cory's, then that might be enough.

By the way, why not go on a pelagic trip or two (dedicated pelagics will have very experienced birders to call the birds out for you), then all this will become academic?;)

Best,
Jim
 
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I must admit I thought Nthn Fulmar for 3, when I first saw it, but, isn't the "pale head" a wave top behind the bird, therefor making the head much more "shearwater-y"? The general tone of the upperparts ( allowing for bleaching ) seems to point towards Cory's with the rather anomalous wing shape down to the angle of the bird when photographed.
Chris
 
Simon M said:
?!?!
Why would their occurrence pattern at Hoylake be relevant to whether or not they're West of Bermuda at a given time of year?!
Click to expand...

Saddleworth moor is on the Yorkshire Lancs border, as far away from the sea as its possible to be at that latitude.... my point was they are notorious wanderers at that time of the year - its how they managed to colonise in the first place - not that long ago they only bred on St Kilda. They have a penchant for looking for new breeding areas in May!

The history of these gull-like tube-noses, over the last 100 years, is quite amazing and very well documented. At the turn of the century some 20,000 pairs bred on St Kilda and had been there for centuries. Other sites were colonised from Foula in 1878 followed by the isolated islands of the Outer Hebrides, Shetland, Orkney and even the mainland at Clo Mor in Sutherland. These colonists are thought to have originated from the Icelandic population and not St Kilda — where they were an important resource for the human population. The total outside St Kilda breeding in 1900 was in the low 100s and probably not as many as 500! Ireland was first colonised in Mayo in 1911, England (Yorkshire) in 1922 and Wales (Dyfed) in 1931. The current estimate for breeding pairs is 580,000 including 63,000 on the St Kilda group! We may confidently expect the figure to be higher for the current survey, Seabird 2000, since the population growth of at least 3-4% p.a. seems to be continuing.
Click to expand...

And Jim - you managed to miss out the "if I could see pale bases to the primaries" in the sentence you quoted!
 
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