Readers’ wildlife photos

Hooray! I received two batches of photos last night, so we can keep going until Thursday, at least.

Today’s photos are from David Riddell; his captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.  These photos were taken last weekend.

Went out last Saturday on a seabird-watching “pelagic” trip off the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.  The weather was looking marginal, but we’d postponed twice and really wanted to get out there, so set out at dawn from the small seaside town of Whangamata, heading for the deep water where the open ocean specialists live.  In the end we saw 19 “tubenose” species (Procellariiformes: the albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters and their relatives), plus little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor).

After about three hours the slow, old fishing boat we’d chartered arrived off the edge of the Continental Shelf, beyond Mayor Island. This is an extinct volcano, known for its cliffs of solid, glossy black obsidian, once traded throughout the country by Maori, who made cutting tools out of it.  The mainland behind has almost entirely disappeared in the murk along the horizon

Chopped-up fish bits thrown off the back of the boat soon had a mixed flock of birds gathering to enjoy the feast. Most were flesh-footed shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes), but other species were among them.  There’s a black petrel (Procellaria parkinsoni) right of centre in the picture below, with the bone-coloured bill:

Flesh-footed shearwaters of course have pinkish legs and feet, as well as slightly pinkish, dark-tipped bills. They breed widely on islands off north-eastern New Zealand, as well as off Australia and in the Indian Ocean, though numbers globally are declining:

Black petrels on the other hand have dark feet, and are slightly bigger and blacker. They used to breed widely on the New Zealand mainland but are now confined to two islands north-east of Auckland.  Population estimates range between 20,000 and 38,000.  Their Maori name is taiko, which some may remember from some previous photos of mine posted here. It is also the name of a much rarer bird in the Chatham Islands:

Squabbles over the fish bits grew quite intense! This is a black petrel being pursued by a flesh-footed shearwater:

It was a good day to test identification skills on the dark seabirds. This one is a grey-faced petrel (Pterodroma gouldi), which breed on islands around northern New Zealand, as well as a few mainland sites:

Another dark species, and possibly the bird of the day, was this short-tailed shearwater (Ardenna tenuirostris). They may be the world’s most abundant seabird, with an estimated population of 23 million birds, breeding on islands around southern Australia, though few make it across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand.  It’s like a smaller, daintier version of the sooty shearwater (Ardenna grisea) which is almost as abundant, breeding in huge numbers around southern New Zealand, as well as off Australia, Chile and the Falklands.  One of those was seen on Saturday as well, though I missed it myself:

After a while the big guns arrived, drawn in by the smell of the fish. Four albatross species were seen, with white-capped mollymawks (Thalassarche cauta) the most numerous:

There were also several Antipodean albatrosses (Diomedea antipodensis), the local form of wandering albatross (D. exulans), from which it was recently split.  This one is a Gibson’s albatross (D. a. gibsoni); one of the nominate subspecies also turned up:

Hanging out at the back of the feeding frenzy were a few New Zealand storm petrels (Fregetta maoriana). They were two small and distant to get decent photos with my ancient camera, but I thought I’d throw this in just to show they were there.  As I posted here previously, these were believed to be extinct until rediscovered in 2003, more than a century after the previous confirmed sighting.  Since the clearing of rats and cats from their breeding ground on Little Barrier Island their numbers have boomed – until recently they were mainly seen north of Auckland, but we saw five, further south in the Bay of Plenty:

Closer inshore was a different suite of birds, and it was a delight to see several little shearwaters (Puffinus assimilis) fly past. These are normally scattered in ones and twos, and don’t hang around boats like some of the other petrels and shearwaters: