July 2000 Field Journal

7.10 [SFBirds] Re: [Fwd: [SFBirds] Oceanic Society Pelagic, Sat July 9 to Farallones]
My apologies for duplicated Hugh's earlier post; obviously I haven't had enough
coffee this morning... :-|

> Bullers Shearwater 4

Buller's Shearwaters appear to be showing up earlier this year than usual;
what's a typical early arrival date for them?

7.29, Salvin's Albatross, Cordell Bank, MRN
Chronology:
At about 2:30 in the afternoon on 29 July, 2000 on the way back from the Cordell Bank, someone near the front of the boat called out "Albatross". Since Black-footed Albatrosses had been seen throughout the day, I assumed that we had happened upon a Laysann Albatross (hereafter LAAL). Sure enough, the bird came down the starboard side of the boat and I picked it up pretty quickly. Another leader near me called out LAAL, but Jim Danzenbaker immediately screamed out "No it's not!". At this point, I got on the bird and saw that the wing linings were essentially pure white. I then panned over to the head of the bird and saw the gray bill and thought "Oh my god!"

Photos:
At that point, I started taking pictures. Alas, with the heavy overcast (though shutter speeds were fairly fast), the scans are only of documentation quality. Interestingly enough, there's quite a bit more detail in the slide corresponding to the ventral view (ME1). In particular, the black tip on the gray bill shows up quite readily and the "smudge" at the base of the leading edge of the wing in the ventral view is clearly discernible rather than hinted at. I'm not sure I'd want to come to a conclusion on the pattern of the wing tips. As well, the brownish-gray cervical collar contrasting with pale gray head is also evident.

The dorsal view (ME2) is even less remarkable and only serves to reinforce the abrupt white transition between the back and the rump. However, there is a small arrrowhead of dark intruding on the otherwise pristine white of the rump.

Description:
This description is based on my photos (ME1 and ME2) , a much better photograph (EP1) by Eric Preston, and my own notes in the field:

An obvious Albatross which is dominantly dark above and light below. The upper wing was uniform dark gray brown with the coloration extending across the back. The rump was purse white, contrasting abruptly with the dark back. Ther was a very thin vee of coloration extending from the back into the underwise pristine white of the rump. The upper tail was dark. The coloration of the back entended onto the cervical area that extended down around the face. The face was paler, appraoching the paleness of the rest of the underparts. The top of the head was pale gray, contrasting noticeably with the cervical region.

Based on my field notes, the bill color was uniform gray, though this is not clear from any of the photos. The tip of the bill was black, perhaps more so on the mandible than on the maxilla. The underwing was extremely white, with a thin black border along the leading and trailing edges. The black of the leading edge was thicker where the wing met the body. There was a significant bleeding of the black on the leading edge between the wrist and the wing tip on the underwing.

The black on the tips of the underwing was pronounced, forming an arc leading perpendicularly from the leading edge near the base of the outermost primary almost to the wrist at the trailing edge. The black on the trailing edge was slightly thinner than that of the leading edge. Otherwise, the underwing was almost pure white.

Analysis:
This analysis is based on the above description. Since I have no field experience with procellariiformes from the southern hemisphere, I have relied entirely on photographs on the web and in Seabirds of the World (SOW), by Peter Harrison. For this analysis, the following photographs were used:

The underwing pattern eliminates all Albatrosses other than members of the the Shy Albatross complex, (nominate Shy Albatross Thalassarche (Diomedea) (cauta) cauta, Salvin's Albatross Thalassarche (Diomedea) (cauta) salvini and  Chatham Island Albatross Thalassarche (Diomedea) (cauta) eremita) and Buller's Albatross Diomedea bulleri. We first consider separation between the Shy complex (hereafter SHYC) and Buller's Albatross (hereafter BUAL).

We consider all possible field marks, relying on a fairly small set of photographs from which to draw conclusions for each field mark.

It seems fairly clear that the bird is some member of SHYC, but can it be identified to subspecies? Also, the extensive smudging on the head pretter clearly ages the bird as a juvenile, perhaps a fairly young bird. Fortunately, there have been several postings on Frontiers of Identification which clarify much of this matter.

For the following discussion, we denote Shy Albatross as SHAL, Salvin's Albatross as SAAL and Chatham Island Albatross as CIAL.

While the analysis is not quite definitive, it does strongly favor a very young juvenile Salvin's Albatross. However, Salvin's Albatross is not currently recognized as a separate species by the AOU, so the identification in North America would be Shy Albatross of the Salvin's race. There are no previous records in North America for Salvin's Albatross (or for Buller's Albatross, for that matter), but there are records from Oregon and Washington for SHAL. SHAL is not on the California Bird List, but there was a well-seen individual in 1999 at roughly the same time of year in the Point Arena area. Assuming that the 1999 Point Arena bird is accepted (the photos are definitive), this sighting would be the second record for California if accepted. However, this sighting would be the first record both for California and North America if accepted and SHYC is split by the AOU as it has been split already in the Southern Hemisphere.

Home

You can contact me via email.