Mutton Birds Dying On Our Shores Newcastle Herald Thursday October 12, 2000 By MIKE SCANLON PARTS of the Hunter coastline were littered with hundreds of corpses of exhausted mutton birds yesterday. Concerned people contacted local councils and the National Parks and Wildlife Service to raise the alarm. A National Parks spokeswoman at Raymond Terrace headquarters said it had received numerous calls from the public about the dead birds. They littered beaches from Blacksmiths to Yagon, in the Myall Lakes National Park near Seal Rocks. She said callers reported the dead birds often being washed ashore in remote areas. `There are reports of hundreds of dead birds, theyve struck bad weather flying home I suppose, she said. `Unfortunately the deaths are a natural phenomenon. The birds fly a long way, become exhausted, die and end up washed onto the beaches. The spokeswoman said a ranger had seen `thousands of birds yesterday flying west, low over the ocean. Each year the North Coast sea birds, officially called short-tailed shearwaters, travel in a 30,000km to 40,000km cycle around the Pacific rim, flying around 300km a day for five months. Their annual migration begins at the start of the southern winter, when the birds migrate north and travel to New Zealand, Japan and Alaska before looping back via California to Brisbane and farther south. Recent hot weather and storms off the coast seem to have contributed to what appears to be a higher than normal number of deaths this year. In 1991, about 3000 dead and dying mutton birds were reported littering Stockton Beach with hundreds more along Newcastle Beaches. Initial reports reaching The Herald yesterday indicated up to 300 dead or dying birds washed up on sections of North Stockton and around Blacksmiths beaches alone. Lake Macquarie Council senior environmental officer Jim Sullivan said yesterday he had found up to 100 dead birds near Blacksmiths Beach. `Theyve probably struck bad weather but we checked the sea water to make sure. The birds didnt die from pollution, he said. A brown scum found in the water was tested but found to contain only algae. Mr Sullivan said he believed the recent storms off the coast could have played a big role in the demise of the mutton birds, who had little strength left. He said dead birds found at Stockton had not been affected by an oil spillage and were not reported damaged. He expected more dead birds to be reported today. The emigration of the Australian shearwaters has been described as one of the epic migratory bird flights of the world. They are one of the few birds which breed in Australia and emigrate to the northern hemisphere during the Australian winter. Mutton birds have been returning to the same breeding grounds in Bass Strait in the last week of September since records were first kept in 1846. One of the colonys birds was tagged by researchers and found to return to the same nest every year for 17 consecutive years.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 07:09:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015