Finders-in-the-Field: probable White-chinned Petrel, Cley
Shearwaters of the North Atlantic
(© John Gale galleryofbirds.co.uk)
Although the morning sessions have been relatively unproductive for seabirds at Cley recently, a slightly stronger NE wind yesterday morning encouraged me to try seawatching one more time. After a couple of hours (and having presumably missed a Great Shearwater that had flown east past Sheringham early doors) our meagre highlights amounted to just a few Bonxies, a Puffin, some Little Gulls and the odd Manx. At 9.40am I picked up a medium-sized dark brown bird flying in from the east that was oddly unfamiliar. While still mentally wrestling with it not being a Bonxie and not being a Cory’s Shearwater, I called it to the attention of the other three birders in the shelter (Graham Fellows, Peter Colston and Steve Chapman), who quickly got onto the bird, which was slowly making its way west in front of us, out beyond the flags. Although it was not too far out and well-lit by the sun, there was little to discern in the plumage – the bird just looked all dark brown; it was more the structure of the bird and the flight style that demanded attention. The barrel body, protruding head & tail and long, sinuous (slightly arced) wings added up to a large petrel of some sort. Always in view (not dipping into troughs) it was sailing languidly just above the water with ease, tipping casually from side to side, normally presenting a dorsal view on each low upsweep. After a while, it flipped to show the underwing, and the sunlight caught a quite striking pale flash at the base of the primaries. It eventually continued away to the west, still unidentified.
Throughout the sighting, I only knew that I was watching a seabird that was completely new to me. With my only experience of large petrels being limited to just Giant Petrels in Falkland, and having never been at sea in the southern oceans, I simply could not guess beyond ‘all-dark petrel’ as an identity for the bird. Racking my brains for likely candidates (for all I knew there may have been dozens) and at least eliminating candidates such as Pacific Fulmar, and melanistic Cory’s Shearwater, no ID came - but it had to be something! Realising news had to be broadcast on the pager, at least in order to alert any potential seawatchers west of us, I plucked out Great-winged Petrel as a potential option - as I believed it to be large, brown and recently in the news (one off Spain, I was told), then phoned it to RBA as a possible. I chose this wording rather than ‘dark petrel sp’ in order to convey an impression, and avoid confusion with, say, Swinhoe’s or Bulwers.
Shortly afterwards, I took a call from Mark Golley (who has experience of dark petrels off South Africa and in Antarctica) and after the initial patter he suggested White-chinned Petrel as an option. Because my total experience of that species relates to the one that had been photographed overhead in Orkney, I had dismissed that species because surely they should be all-black, like that bird… Apparently not the case though – seems they can show brown hues in sunlight against a grey sea. Also, after relating the flight style to Julian Thomas in the car-park, he was of the opinion that White-chinned was the lazier flyer, Great-winged being more reminiscent of a Pterodroma in action (and this was also the opinion of experienced south seas traveller Ron Johns later in the day). Given that input, I revised the earlier message to ‘apparent White-chinned Petrel’, which was duly MEGA’d.
We had not seen a white chin on the bird, but it did not seem too unreasonable a presumption that White-chinned was the likely answer. A fuller description will be forthcoming, including input from the other observers, but I was blackmailed into submitting a finders’ account, so this is it for now…
I don’t know about the two later reports, other than at 12.50 it was apparently spotted by some five observers, taking several minutes to pass by eastwards, and I will leave those observers to account it as they wish.
Richard Millington
22 September 2020
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