Official OSNZ Trips a Blast!

As well as Gary running his 'unofficial' commando tour a great many Ornithological Society New Zealand members joined us on pre-arranged pelagic tours. And what a great time we had! we only had to travel 25 minutes from the South Bay harbour, before we were over the depths of the Kaikoura Canyon and deep into pelagic territory. We threw out our 'albatross ice cream' consisting of frozen fish liver and waited...

The first visitors of the day were Cape Petrels in their ones and twos at first but rapidly increasing in numbers, the Cape Petrels acted as advertisers to the albatross and before long we had species after species flying in to the rear of the boat (at one point we had 5 or 6 different species around us). And on the morning tours, just as we were about to leave and head for home a Salvins Albatross flew in (a 'shy' albatross with a distinctive grey head), this was an unusual species to see this time of year and as an extra bonus it was a species not seen by Gary and the commando birders!

A complete species list for the day runs as follows:

Albatross:
Southern Royal
Gibsons
Antipodean
Albatross (Mollymawks):
Black Browed
New Zealand Whitecapped
Bullers

Salvins
Petrels:
Giant (Nothern and Southern)
Westland
Cape (Snares)

Shearwaters:
Huttons

Sooty
Terns:
White-fronted
Gulls:
Black-backed
Red-billed
Black-billed

hope you all enjoyed the tours, it was certainly a great day to be out on the water, with some spectacular views to be had.

We hope to see many of the OSNZ members back here again.

Good birding

Alex.......