Blast From the Past- Michaelmas Cay

This small island off the coast of Queensland is situated in the Great Barrier Reef. Many tropical seabirds breed on the island. Most of the birds are common noddies and sooty terns, but mixed in with them are bridled terns, brown boobies, great crested terns, lesser crested terns and silvergulls, among others. I had the fortune to visit this island in 2012 on a snorkelling cruise, and I never forgot it.

The moment I saw the small dot of sand on the horizon, I could see seabirds on the island like huge clouds. Any bit of flotsam in the turquoise blue waves immediately became a perch for seabirds. Soon I could see the birds more clearly and the island was a strip of sand instead of just a little dot. A diving cage was put out, and almost immediately a brown noddy landed on it.

Small boats were sent out to the island and I got in one. Soon I heard the dull thump of the boat hitting the sandy beach. It was like heaven. The terns were everywhere!

SOOTY TERN WITH YOUNG Onychoprion fuscatus

As I watched, a sooty tern landed and started feeding its young. A brown booby bird swooped down from the sky and landed on a sign, then flying down to a rope separating us from the nests. I looked further across the high grassy part of the island and saw a colony of swift terns, with two lesser crested terns in the background. It was amazing!

BROWN BOOBY Sula leucogaster

BROWN BOOBY Sula leucogaster

SWIFT TERNS Thalasseus bergii AND LESSER CRESTED TERNS Thalasseus bengalensis

Soon, people started being sent out for snorkelling with their guides. I got to go in as well. As I slipped into the water I saw beautiful coral swaying in the waves. A lionfish played in the rocks as a parrotfish fed. I even saw a giant clam!

YELLOWFIN PARROTFISH Scarus flavipectoralis

If I had the chance, I would gladly visit Michaelmas Cay again. 

Megafauna Birds

A long, long time ago, in the time of the Pleistocene era, the area we know as Greater Melbourne was a vast grassland, with patches of open woodland. On this grassland lived many different creatures, from giant monitor lizards to wombats 1.7 metres long. This included various different birds.
Emus shared the open woodlands with another bird, the much larger Newton's mihirung Genyornis newtoni. It weighed 275 kilograms and grew to 2.15 metres high. The Newton's mihirung was the last survivor from an ancient family of birds that dominated the landscape for over 50 million years and were related to ducks and geese. Around 8 different species have been identified. The biggest was Dromornis stilton which stood three metres tall and weighed about a tonne, but went extinct in the Pleistocene. Though some early species of mihirung such as Bullockornis planei (the demon duck) were probably carnivores, the Newton's mihirung used its thick bill to snap up shrubs. As grassland spread throughout the Pleistocene landscape, the mihirung found it harder to find a nice habitat and eventually went extinct.

AUSTRALIAN BRUSH TURKEY Alectura lathami

Currently in Australia there are only three different species of megapode. These are the Australian brush turkey, the malleefowl and the orange-footed scrubfowl. Back in the Pleistocene there was another species. The giant malleefowl, Progura gallinacea, was 1.30 metres long and weighed 5-7 kilograms, compared with the modern-day malleefowl's 60 cm length and 2.5 kilogram weight. Like modern malleefowl, the giant mallefowl probably laid its eggs in mounds. These mounds are made of soil and compost. The heat from this incubates the eggs. The giant malleefowl was not the only giant bird in the Pleistocene. Most birds had larger forms back then. The giant coucal Centropus colossus was another of them. It probably looked a lot like the modern day pheasant coucal C. phasianinus, the only Australian coucal species that survives today. Coucals are a genus of cuckoos. Most have barred chests and long tails. Unlike normal cuckoos, they make their own nests and raise their own young instead of laying their eggs in another bird's nest. They prefer running into the undergrowth rather than flying, though they are not flightless. The giant coucal was probably even more terrestrial and was not as good at flying as the modern coucal.

HORSEFIELD'S BRONZE CUCKOO Chrysococcyx basalis

Flamingoes also once flew in Australian skies. There were different species, such as Phoeniconotius eyrensis, which lived in Lake Eyre in South Australia (at that time it was a vast inland lake home to waterbirds, lungfish, crocodiles and many marsupials), alongside another species P. novaehollandiae.  It is thought that these flamingoes were slightly larger than the living great flamingo Phoenicopteris ruber. As Australia dried out and inland waterways disappeared, flamingoes started to become extinct. Now the only flamingoes in Australia are occasional vagrants to the Cocos-Keeling Islands.
Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea were all joined together, so some New Guinean birds also lived in Australia. The northern (Casuarius unappendiculatus) and dwarf cassowaries (C. bennetti) are now restricted to New Guinea, but were once found in Australia as well. The southern cassowary (C. casuarius), the only cassowary species that still lives in Australia, probably got here by coming over the land bridge.

Gulls of Australia

There are three different resident species of gull that can be found in and around Australia. One is endemic to Australia while the other two are not. Two are in the genus Larus, while one is in the genus Chroicocephalus. 

PACIFIC GULL Larus pacificus with SILVER GULLS Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae

KELP GULL Larus dominicanus

SILVER GULL Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae

The Pacific gull, Larus pacificus, is endemic to southern Australia. It has black wings, a white head, yellow legs, white underparts and a yellow beak with a red tip. Both mandibles of the beak have the red tip. Juveniles are mottled-brown with pinkish bills tipped in black. There are two subspecies. The eastern subspecies pacificus prefers sheltered beaches for its home, while the western georgii doesn't mind exposed shores. Both subspecies are uncommon and usually seen alone or in pairs. They eat molluscs, fish and other small marine animals. They often fly up and drop shellfish on rocks to try and break the shell. They nest in pairs or loose colonies on offshore islands. There are two types of nest. Some birds use a scrape in the ground lined with small stones or gravel, while others build small, shallow bowls made of sticks, grass, seaweed and feathers. Both parents build the nest and the female does most of the incubation, while the male guards the nest and brings the female food. One to three (usually two) eggs are laid. Altona Beach at low tide is a good place to see this bird.

The kelp gull, Larus dominicanus, can be found in southern Australia, most of the sub-Antarctic islands, New Zealand and parts of Africa and South America. It looks rather like a Pacific gull.  Indeed, the two species can be very hard to tell apart. However, two things can be used to tell them apart. The kelp gull is much smaller and less stocky than the large Pacific gull, and only one of its mandibles has a red tip. Juveniles look similar, coloured mottled brown. Like the Pacific gull it prefers sheltered parts of the coast. It mostly eats fish and crustaceans, but it doesn't mind scavenging when it gets to. Also like the Pacific gull, it drops shellfish from a height to crack open their shells. It nests in loose colonies or scattered pairs. The nest is either a loose pile of material on the ground near rocks, or a bowl of stems, grasses and seaweeds. Both adults build the nest, incubate the 2 to 3 eggs and feed the young.

The silver gull, Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae, is found throughout Australia and also in New Caledonia. It was once considered the same species as the closely related New Zealand red-billed gull and African Hartlaub's gull. It has a white head and underparts. Its wings are light grey, tipped with black. Adult birds have bright orange-red bills, eye-rings and legs. Immature and subadult birds have black where the adult birds have red. Juvenile birds have brown mottling on their wings and also have black bills, eye-rings and legs. Silver gulls can be found at pretty much any wetland and rarely fly far from land. They are successful scavengers who pester people for scraps and steal from food containers and rubbish tips. They will also eat worms, fish, insects and crustaceans. They nest in large colonies on offshore islands. Two broods are often raised in a year. The nest is a shallow scrape in the ground lined with vegetation. 3 eggs are laid. Both parents build the nest, incubate the eggs and feed the young.

Several other species have turned up in Australia as vagrants. Black-headed gulls, Sabine's gulls, laughing gulls, mew gulls, Franklin's gulls, black-tailed gulls and lesser black-backed gulls have all been seen. The laughing and Franklin's gulls are in the genus Leucophaeus. The black-headed gull is in the genus Chroicocephalus. The Sabine's gull is in the genus Xema. All the other vagrants are in the genus Larus.

Those are the gulls found in Australia.

Birding a wetland in Hawaii

I haven't been able to bird for some time now so I am going to give you a flashback of the past, when I was in Hawaii for a trip and on a birding tour on the island of Oahu. I had passed a blowhole and seen white-tailed tropicbirds, zebra doves, Java sparrows and a mongoose. Now I was going to go to one of the few remaining wetlands on Oahu, where endemic Hawaiian waterbirds could be found. I think the moment I knew we were there was when I spotted an endangered Hawaiian stilt on the sidewalk . . .

HAWAIIAN STILT Himantopus mexicanus knudseni

We stopped and everyone started taking photos of the stilt before it flew off into the wetland on the other side of the road. Immediately I spotted a distant Hawaiian duck, though it was probably a Hawaiian X mallard hybrid. Hawaiian ducks are now found only on Oahu, the Big Island and Kaua'i. In Oahu, mallards have hybridised with them and now only a few birds in the far north of the island are purebred. I took a few photos then looked a bit further for a Hawaiian coot. I spotted two non-endemic wetland birds that are common wherever there is water or a lot of grass in Oahu - a black-crowned night heron and a Pacific golden plover. The birds were coming right up to us! A normally secretive Hawaiian moorhen was slowly coming out of the grass and giving us great views! Even more Hawaiian stilts were feeding in the water and I thought I saw a Hawaiian duck nesting!

HAWAIIAN X MALLARD DUCK Anas wyvilliana X platyrhynchos

HAWAIIAN COOT Fulica alai (can you see it?)

HAWAIIAN MOORHEN Gallinula chloropus sandvicensis

BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT-HERON Nycticorax nycticorax hoactli

PACIFIC GOLDEN PLOVER Pluvialis fulva

All too soon, it was time to go, but I shall always remember that wetland for the easiest and most productive birding I have ever done.