Heard about this on "Australia all over" on Sunday morning. They are young Mutton-birds. For the first 5 years of their lives, they live far out at sea, without coming to land at all. Apparently these have been caught in Storms or Cyclones/Typhoons way way out from land.
They've been coming ashore almost the whole length of the East Coast.
Wish I could remember the exact detail of the explanation that was given. If I'd known this might come up here, I'd have written it down.
Cheers,
Sheba.
-- Edited by Sheba on Tuesday 5th of November 2013 11:20:04 PM
After a couple of very windy days, we went down to the local beach today... as shown in my avatar pic... and discovered dead birds on the beach, hundreds, maybe thousands of them! Very confronting.
I called the local NPWS, and learned that they are Shearwaters, also known as Mutton-birds who become exhausted on their migratory flight, drown and are washed ashore. Apparently it happens annually, but we'd never seen anything like this. Poor birds, they'd have been trying to fly into those strong winds we'd had.
Has anybody else found dead birds along the coast south of Wollongong? Or anywhere else?
Wow sounds like a few factors causing them to be more exausted this year than normal. Weather, perhaps lack of food so not enough condition on them to make the trip. We were on the coast this time the last two years and never saw anything that bad, just the odd one.
We get them down here too as they head this way during October/November then about March/April they head back North. As you have both found out, a lot don't make it. Even if they do make it here they then have to fight their way through traffic, yes traffic as they are that buggered by the time they get here they actually land on the roads so you can guess what happens.
They are very noisy as well while flying as there are so many off them.
Many years ago and even now but to a smaller extent people used to shoot them and eat them.
Full of good? info aren't I, sorry.
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thats strange because i too saw heaps of black birds on the beach at fraser island but i got told by several
that they were on the radio talking about it, these birds apparently were from some foreign country and had lost there
way and were just sitting on the beach waiting to die, must of been a different sort of bird, because some one was
reporting it and that was the story i got ,apparently they were exhausted and from sybiria or some weird country and
had totaly lost there way .
thats strange because i too saw heaps of black birds on the beach at fraser island but i got told by several that they were on the radio talking about it, these birds apparently were from some foreign country and had lost there way and were just sitting on the beach waiting to die, must of been a different sort of bird, because some one was reporting it and that was the story i got ,apparently they were exhausted and from sybiria or some weird country and had totaly lost there way .
Yep that would be them Glassies, they fly amazing distances from the Arctic circle all the way to Tasmania, Antarctica, NZ. Poor buggers, they don't get an easy life.
We've also got many dead birds on our local beach, just south of Batemans Bay. Apparently they fly 10,000 kilometres from the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Japan, to Australia, they eat little and are exhaused by their flight. Normally, what are called wrecks (large numbers of deaths), occur every 10 years, but since 2007 major wrecks have been occurring every second year. There is an informative article written by Deborah Gough from the Sydney Morning Herald, published on October 30th. It is indeed a sad sight to see so many washed ashore.
Is that still happening? I experienced this phenomenon at Nambucca Heads about 3 or 4 weeks ago. Went out for my morning walk one day and found a bird washed up to the high tide mark every few feet.
There was hundreds on Boomerang beach & Elizabeth beach two weeks ago. Lots on Corindi beach last week. They seem to be over a big stretch of coastline. The strange thing was my dog wouldn't go near them, not even for a sniff. She would take a wide berth around them, like she knew something was wrong.
I remember as a kid my parents used to process mutton birds and cook them. The smell was absolutely terrible but the eating was real nice as long as you like salty food. Tasted like really greasy, salty, fatty KFC. lol. Bit like what you get today.
