Pelagic advice from Sydney (1 Viewer)

I'm off to Australia in about 3 weeks, starting in Sydney for a few days. Unfortunately I've managed to miss the October pelagic which goes the day before I arrive. So I'm stuck with whale watching tours or no sea birds. Has anybody had experience of these tours?

They seem a bit touristy, e.g. they often seem keener to tell you about the tea and cake on board or the fabulous views of Sydney harbour, rather than give good information about whales and sea birds.

Obviously I'm not expecting anything comparible with a true pelagic, but for a birder who's never been to the South Pacific and only ever seen one albatross sitting in the middle of a gannet colony on Shetland, are they worth the money, and is there and any particular one which is better than the others?

Hi Colin,

what dates are you going to be in Sydney? There are also pelagics from Kiama to the south and Port Stephens to the north or Sydney, dates can be found at the SOSSA website http://www.sossa-international.org/. There are also trips from the Brisbane area if you're up that way.

I've only got experience with one whalewatching boat who I've led for but they no longer run trips. I'd definitely recommend going on a whalewatching trip from Sydney in the coming weeks as the Wedge-tailed Shearwaters are back for the summer and the Short-tailed Shearwater migration has started and both species tend to stay relatively close to shore and are easily seen on a whalewatching boat. There are still some Albatross around, on a seawatch this week I saw several Black-browed and Shy Albatross plus several Northern Giant-petrels, Fluttering Shearwaters plus many Wedge-tailed and Short-tailed Shearwaters.

I'm not sure who to recommend to go out with but these guys https://www.whalewatchingsydney.net/blog seem reasonable having looked through their blog.

I don't think any of the boats would put out any chum to attract the birds but Wedge-tailed Shearwaters often follow boats even if no food is available as will some other species.

Hope this helps, feel free to ask away if you have any more questions.

Cheers,

Rob

Thanks Rob,
We're in Sydney from the 11th - 18th October, then head north to Cairns. The whale watching trip you suggested is one which we were looking at ourselves so it's looking favourite at the moment. I'm not expecting masses of sea birds from a whale watching trip, but it's encouraging to know that we should at least see a few, hopefully albatrosses included.

Thanks again

Colin