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Highlights from 'Birding Down Under'

HIGHLIGHTS FROM ‘BIRDING DOWN UNDER’
November 5th  - 22nd 2007

The Southern Ocean is a body of water with no limitation. Here the waves and wind more or less constantly blow with a prevailing direction from the west, known for the roaring forties, screaming fifties and howling sixties. You can travel around much of these without touching any land.

A small number of islands, called the Subantarctics, stand alone in this rugged ocean and are home and breeding sites for a number of truly pelagic birds, tubenoses and penguins together with fur and elephant seals. Our aim on this voyage was to explore these islands south of New Zealand, which are extremely rich in wildlife and are home to several endemics.

During the heydays of sailing ships, these windy latitudes were used to sail between an ever growing market in Europe and with commodities from Australia, New Zealand and South America. It was James Cook onboard his ship ‘Endeavour’ and later ‘Resolution’, who was the very first to fully explore this body of water 1768 – 1775.

Reports of islands teaming life with marine birds, mammals and also exotic endemic birds on the islands were soon entering the arena. The first to really take advantage were the fur seal trappers. A cruel and rapid slaughter spread along the Subantarctic islands and in a few years the population of fur seals and elephant seals got more or less wiped out. Killing the pups and also the adult animals made it impossible for them to withstand the harvest. Also the albatross and penguins had their share of exploitation. At Macquarie, Falkland, Kerguelen and Crozet Islands penguins were harvested on mass to make oil.

Today we have finally realised and become more precious about nature. New Zealand, an area with a high degree of endemism, was especially targeted after the Europeans arrived and lost many species. The chain of Subantarctic islands; Snares, Auckland, Campbell and Macquarie (Australian) to the south are now all under strict control and all set aside for wildlife conservation. Here we find one of the richest marine bird life in the world and also marine mammals, earlier heavily harvested, now slowly making a come back. A few endemic birds will never make it back as the population was killed out by several of the introduced mammals, rats, cats, pigs, sheep, dogs, cows.

On the other hand, careful conservation mainly by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation and very often tied to a single very dedicated person, has seen some of the bird species surviving and even reintroduced to their former islands.

We had the pleasure and honour to have onboard Don Merton, as we sailed in Chatham Island waters. He is the “grandfather” of rescuing many of the species in New Zealand almost pushed almost to the brink of extinction.

As we approached Chatham Island we were blessed with remarkably good weather, very rarely encountered in these windy waters, which gave us unique opportunities.

On our first day at Rangatira, we did a superb outing with our fleet of Naiads along the coastline. This is the only home for birds like shore plover, Chatham petrel, Chatham snipe and also the black robin. The island is now free from any land predators and carefully managed.

The black robin was almost extinct with only five (four males and one female), remaining on the Little Mangere island and all birds were caught and later brought in to Rangatira, which had been made predator free. Here the population had slowly been re-established and later birds have been relocated back to their former island. Again with our unique weather conditions Heritage Expeditions for the first time ever was able to launch a second outing along the shoreline to Mangere Islands. Here some even got the unique opportunity to sight the extremely rare BLACK ROBIN and the endemic parakeet, Forbes parakeet. Both species are likely never to have been seen by previous bird groups, only seen by the scientists who work hard to maintain the populations.

At Campbell Island some lucky few were also able to encounter a bird which went to the very edge of extinction, the Campbell Island Teal. Rodney Russ was the biologist to find a few birds surviving at Dent Island in 1975. The birds were caught and carefully bred on the mainland and have now been slowly reintroduced to Campbell Island. The problem here was the numbers of rats, brought in by the early sealers. A huge effort was made by the New Zealand Conservation Department in the winter of 2001 to eradicate the rats at a cost of NZ$2 M and was a great success. Now the island is slowly progressing to a state before any humans ever set foot here. Our staff Pete Tyree was part of the team to spend the winter here in 2001 to eradicate the rats. Now six years later he was overwhelmed by how fast the vegetation was returning. Nature does have remarkable strength!

Birds like the endemic pipit have now spread all over the main island, after been almost 200 years only surviving on the few outlying rocks. The teal is still low in numbers, but if the progress continues. We are sure in decades to come many more eager birders will be able to encounter this bird.

This voyage is magical for any one with an interest in pelagic birds as New Zealand waters are rich with sea birds. This voyage took us to the breeding sites of 8 different penguin species, 6 unique for this part of the world. Also the sailing area, almost 2,528 nautical miles, is a strong hold for many of the birds represented by the tubenose family. Of the 22 different albatross species, depending on which of the current taxonomy you follow, we have been able to get great sightings of 14 species. The highlight of course was our landing at Campbell Island to spend almost a whole day at the breeding site the Southern Royal albatross.

Many of the smaller tubenoses, Pteradromas and storm petrels, have suffered extremely because of the introduction of rats, cats, dogs, pigs. Many of these species have an extremely narrow and localised breeding area, sometimes endemic to a single island or group of islands and all using a burrow for nesting. Before the Europeans started to sail into every ocean many of these seabirds would have been encountered in huge numbers. Now several are on the brink of extinction.

The Magenta petrel was first described in 1867, as a bird was collected onboard an Italian ship near Pitcarn Island. None were ever recorded afterwards. In 1973 David Crockett traveled here attempting to locate a petrel known as the Chatham Island Taiko. Before the white man brought in cats, rats and devastated the local forest and flora on the main island for sheep and cattle grazing this bird used to be common The natives, Moriori, used to harvest the young birds.

In 1978 two birds were caught and finally the mystery of the Magenta petrel was solved, it was the bird known as the Chatham Island Taiko. Today only 6 nesting pairs are known and the whole population is estimated to be about 100 birds.

Taiko ©

As the ship the ‘Spirit of Enderby’ made her way between Bounty Island and Chatham Island on November 17, a few more lucky and active birders onboard got rewarded with a sighting at sea. Only 3 or 4 sightings at sea have been previously recorder and strangely enough one was seen more or less at the same location December 2004 from the same ship. The secret seem to be to search the Southern Ocean near S 45o15 / W177o23.

A lot of time spent at sea in these rich waters also rewards you with cetaceans. Still to be able to spot them and also make a positive identification you need very settled conditions. After our stormy approach to Macquarie Island we were blessed with ideal conditions and a very calm ocean made it possible to locate marine mammals. We found several sperm whales together with several pods of Long-finned Pilot Whales and Southern Right-whale Dolphins. A group of Gray’s Beaked Whales off the bow was a major highlight as many were able to get some great pictures of this extremely elusive mammal. Any sightings of a beaked whale is exciting and a great challenge for identification but this time many got unique opportunities to document this sighting.

As we sailed northwest from Bounty Island and reached the deeper water we also encountered Blue Whale. The whale was spotted by the BirdQuest leader Derek Scott and most got a chance to see the mammal. The ‘blow’ was significantly high and as we saw just below the surface the bluish coloration was very prominent. The only thing which did not really fit in was the size. The animal was also very broad to its length.

During the heydays of Southern Ocean whaling, smaller blue whales were caught mainly north of the Antarctic convergence and they are now sometimes described as an distinct subspecies, Pygmy Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda). This form of blue whale is mainly encountered in the South Indian Ocean but rarely have records been made  in the South Pacific and even in the South Atlantic. Our current knowledge about the population size is more or less zero. Most likely we were lucky to make a sighting!

Overall it is a very exciting adventure and a privelege to be able to sail in these waters. The reward of encountering penguins, albatross, tubenoses in high numbers is great. Although the Southern Ocean can be an inhospitable place, anyone would enjoy the ship ‘Spirit of Enderby’ on its 18 days ‘Birding Down Under’ expedition.

Written by Magnus Forsberg - Heritage Expeditons Staff

Find out more about 'Birding Down Under' and read the full 'Trip Log from Voyage 2490'