A goodly number of COG members and friends rendezvoused on a mild, sunny Saturday lunchtime at the mouth of Lake Illawarra, near Windang (south of Wollongong), for the beginning of a most enjoyable weekend field trip. We lunched on the southern side of the estuary and, with telescopes a little unsteady in the wind, commenced the task of identifying the shorebirds that we could see some distance away on the sand flats. The Bar-tailed Godwits and Eastern Curlews posed no identification problems but a group of waders with heads and bills secured beneath their wings were not so easy. Knots, for sure. Red or Great? Resisting the temptation to decide on the basis of a majority decision (pooled ignorance?) most of us concurred with Sue Lashko, the shorebird big gun of the group, that they were Red Knots. Strolling along the estuary towards the sea we got onto more waders including Red-necked Stints, Red-capped Plovers and Large (Greater) Sand Plovers, along with Caspian, Crested, Common and Whiskered Terns, gulls, cormorants, etc. A rain shower somewhat scattered our party, with some participants regrouping for a visit to the sand flats on the northern side of the estuary, and then seeing what we could see around the southern shore of the Lake. The final birding event was a visit to the Heritage Park, a casuarina-dominated area of forest between the Wollongong road and the Lake. It produced a small number of species of bush birds, including Figbirds. Dinner at the Lake Illawarra Yacht Club was enjoyable, even though most of us were being careful what and how much we ate and drank, bearing in mind the challenges awaiting us on the morrow.
The morrow dawned and 20-odd of us met at the Wollongong inner harbour at 0645 hours to board MV Sandra K for our full day pelagic birding trip. Strong winds and rising seas were forecasted for the arvo, leaving some of us a little apprehensive. We boarded and met our skipper, Carl Loves, and our birding guides, Peter Milburn, Lindsay Smith and Mike Double from SOSSA: the Southern Oceans Seabird Study Association (details at http://members.ozemail.com.au/~sossa). Milburn provided some hints on minimising the risk of sea sickness and, after passing through the Wollongong harbour, we headed NE towards the continental shelf.
Among the first pelagic species to be spotted - more accurately, to be attracted to the burley we dispensed - were the familiar 'muttonbirds': various species of shearwaters. Our guides' expertise came to the fore, not just in identifying the species for us but, more importantly, in helping us to learn how to differentiate between what sometimes looked like an indistinguishable blur of swiftly moving brown seabirds. As someone remarked, 'I bet you didn't know there were so many shades of brown!'.
We recorded about 20 species at sea, including four species of petrel (my favourite was the delightful brown-and-white, tubby Cape Petrel); six shearwater species; one Albatross (the Campbell Island Albatross in the new taxonomy or Black-browed in the old); Wilson's Storm-Petrel; Brown Skua; and Pomarine Jaeger; along with diverse gulls, terns and gannets. Many were around the ship once we reached the edge of the continental shelf some 37 km NE of Wollongong, well east of the 151st meridian of longitude.
By the early afternoon the barometer was telling us that the forecasted change was immanent, so we headed back towards Wollongong, surfing in, as Carl put it, on following seas. With the ship being relatively stable, it was a good time for the licensed SOSSA members to do some catching, banding and releasing. How was this done? Milburn stood at the stern of the ship with a large butterfly net in his hands; Mike threw burley out; the birds came to the vessel and, with deft swishes of the net, were captured by Milburn one at a time and swung on board where Lindsay extracted them from the net, banded them, recorded the details and released them. In all, our SOSSA team banded about 20 shearwaters two of which were recaptures. Based on the numbers on their bands, these birds were probably banded 15-20 years ago, we were advised. What incredible distances they must have traveled over their lifetimes, considering that many of these birds migrate annually to the North Pacific!
We arrived back at Wollongong harbour at 1545 hours. Most of us had seen new species, and all had had the opportunity to learn more of our pelagic birds and to trial yet more techniques of warding off sea-sickness (with differing results!). We are grateful to Jack Holland for making the administrative arrangements for the weekend; Julie McGuiness and Sue Lashko for the terrestrial leading; Milburn, Lindsay and Mike for the pelagic guiding; and Carl for keeping the Sandra K as stable a birding platform as possible, considering the conditions.
David McDonald