First New Caledonian Storm-Petrel record in Australia overlooked – for 50 years

Half a century ago, it was the habit of myself and a handful of birding enthusiast friends – notably Chris Corben, Glen Ingram and Anita Smyth – to regularly walk parts and occasionally all of the 38km ocean beach of North Stradbroke Island, near Brisbane. We usually did so by relaying with motorbikes, so we would not have to retrace our steps. We were on the hunt for dead, beachwashed seabirds. One such walk, with Chris and Anita, took place on July 21, 1973. There was a strong storm two weeks earlier with gale-force south-easterly winds lashing the coast. We found a treasure trove of beach-washed birds, mostly half buried in sand. Among them were 2 Little Shearwaters (very rare in Queensland), 2 Grey-headed Albatross (ditto), 4 White-tailed Tropicbirds, a juvenile Sooty Albatross (first record for Queensland), 4 Southern Giant Petrels including 1 white phase (another Queensland rarity) and 20 Antarctic Prions. I picked up a small dead bird 12km south of Pt Lookout which at first we thought was a Wilson’s Storm-Petrel. Then, as my notes at the time say: “An inspection of the underparts left no doubt that it was a Black-bellied Storm-Petrel.” Measurements of the tarsus, culmen and toe and claw ruled out White-bellied Storm-Petrel. The bird was deposited as specimen QM014391 in the Queensland Museum.

I published the find in the journal Sunbird (4-3, 1973), claiming it as the first record of Black-bellied Storm-Petrel for Queensland. It was later pointed out that Frederick Godman in his Monograph of the Petrels (1907-1910) said there were specimens of the species from the “coast of Queensland” in the British Museum. There were no pelagic trips at the time we were beach combing. We know these days that the species occurs frequently off southern Queensland in winter, such as in the image above. Fast forward that half a century. Recently, the little-known New Caledonian Storm-Petrel was described as a new species. The paper: “Fregetta lineata (Peale, 1848) is a valid extant species endemic to New Caledonia” by Vincent Bretagnolle, Robert L. Flood, Sabrina Gaba & Hadoram Shirihai. Only three specimens of this storm-petrel exist, although it is well-known from numerous sightings of birds off the southern Queensland and northern NSW coasts in recent years by the Southport pelagics folk, such as the one photographed below by Rob Morris.

The first of these specimens was collected in Samoa in 1839 and the second in 1922 in the Marquesus Islands. The third specimen, it turns out, was what we thought was the Black-bellied Storm-Petrel we found in 1973. The paper notes that Bretagnolle looked at our Queensland Museum specimen, noted its “dark streaks”, and identified it as Fregetta lineata - just the third specimen in existence. It is to the left of a real Black-bellied Storm-Petrel specimen from North Stradbroke Island in the first image of this post. New Caledonian Storm-Petrel was totally off our radar at the time. Almost nothing was known of this then near-mythical bird and the possibility did not enter our heads. This edifying saga has a cute twist. Chris Corben now lives in the US and earlier this month was on a Mooloolaba pelagic with me – the first he had been on in Australia for several decades. We had a good run of storm-petrels, including a White-bellied Storm-Petrel (rarely seen in Australia, below) and were hoping for a New Caledonian. I casually mentioned that I hadn’t seen one ever when Louis Backstrom piped up, saying something to the effect of “except that dead one you found on Stradbroke”. Chris and I hadn’t got around to reading the newly published paper. To that point on the boat, we were blissfully unaware of the fact that we’d discovered a new species for Australia, half a century ago.