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Should Kermadec Petrel Be on the British List? Tim Melling

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Should Kermadec Petrel Be on the British List? Tim Melling A paper from the British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee Should Kermadec Petrel be on the British List? Tim Melling ABSTRACT In April 1908, a dark-morph Kermadec Petrel Pterodroma neglecta was reportedly found dead in Cheshire.The record was accepted by BOURC for more than 60 years but was removed from the British List in 1971 because the species was considered to be relatively sedentary in the South Pacific. More recent work has shown that Kermadec Petrel wanders widely in the Pacific and that it may have been recorded in the Atlantic. Since the original reasons for rejection were no longer valid, BOURC decided to review the record.The Committee concluded that it was not impossible for a Kermadec Petrel to occur in British waters but the circumstances surrounding this record made it unlikely to have been a genuine vagrant. Moreover, a commercial taxidermist involved with the record made substantial financial gains from the specimen. Such circumstances are frequently associated with fraud. The Tarporley record he tentatively concluded that it was a Kermadec On 1st April 1908, a dark-morph Kermadec Petrel (known at the time as Schlegel’s Petrel Petrel Pterodroma neglecta was reportedly found Oestrelata neglecta). T. A. Coward was contacted dead under a tree near Tarporley, Cheshire, by ‘a by Robert Newstead for a second opinion and man who attends the weekly market in Chester’ Coward saw the freshly mounted specimen (but (Newstead & Coward 1908). The bird was taken clearly not the spread upperwing and under- to Arthur Newstead, a Chester-based taxider- wing) on 14th April; he agreed that it was a Ker- mist, on Saturday 4th April 1908; it was pur- madec Petrel. chased by him the following day and he The identification was later verified at the subsequently preserved the specimen. Although British Museum (Natural History; BMNH) by Saturday was market day in Chester, and we Dr R. Bowdler Sharpe and Mr F. du Cane know that the finder attended the weekly Godman, and the specimen was exhibited at market, there is no evidence that Newstead meetings of the Zoological Society (12th May bought the bird at the market. 1908; Coward 1908) and the British Ornitholo- At that point, the bird’s identity had not gists’ Club (BOC, 20th May 1908; Oldham been fully established. Arthur Newstead con- 1908). Robert Newstead and Coward published tacted his brother Prof. Robert Newstead the the record in BB, complete with a photograph next day, 5th April; Robert saw the bird in the of the mounted specimen by a third Newstead flesh and took measurements that same brother, Alfred (Newstead & Coward 1908; plate evening. It was skinned and prepared the fol- 17). Coward later arranged for the purchase of lowing morning by Arthur Newstead. On 8th the specimen for the Grosvenor Museum, where April, Robert Newstead, a former curator of the it still remains today (plates 18 & 19). T. Iredale, Grosvenor Museum, Chester, compared the who had studied the species on its breeding specimen with material in Liverpool Museum; grounds, later questioned the identification and © British Birds 101 • January 2008 • 31–38 31 Should Kermadec Petrel be on the British List? The circumstances of the discovery Tarporley is about 13 km southeast of Chester, 20 km from the nearest estuary and almost 40 km from the open coast. The corpse was apparently quite fresh when found, but the slightly shrunken eyes suggested that it had been there a day or two; there were no signs of it having been in captivity. The bird was full-grown and, upon dissection, was 17. The Tarporley Kermadec Petrel Pterodroma neglecta; this photograph appeared in British Birds in 1908 (Newstead & Coward 1908).The bird has been mounted found to be a male; standing up, an uncharacteristic position for a petrel. the stomach was empty, which is a suggested that it was far more likely to be the common feature of storm-driven birds. very similar species now known as Trindade The weather conditions at the time also Petrel P. arminjoniana (Iredale 1914) [note that, appeared to support natural occurrence. for the purposes of this paper, Trindade Petrel According to a contemporary newspaper article and Herald Petrel Pterodroma heraldica are con- written by Coward: ‘For a few days before, the sidered separate species]. However, the speci- wind had been blowing with considerable force men was reassessed by W. R. Ogilvie-Grant of from the west and I have no doubt the bird had the BMNH, reconfirmed as Kermadec Petrel, been driven across the 60 miles [96 km] from and exhibited as such at a BOC meeting in Cardigan Bay before it realised it was out of its March 1914 (Ogilvie-Grant 1914). element. It may, of course, have come up the The record was included by Hartert et al. Dee estuary and crossed the shorter stretch of (1912), and formally accepted in A List of land as it attempted to battle against a sidewind.’ British Birds (2nd edn, BOU 1915). The reputa- Between 25th and 31st March 1908, the wind tion and involvement of both Robert Newstead direction was between NNW and SSW, and on and Coward undoubtedly helped to establish 31st the wind speed in Manchester was 21 mph the record’s credentials. Kermadec Petrel [34 kph] (Newstead & Coward 1908). remained on the British List for more than 60 A number of errors have crept into subse- years, but was removed following review in quent accounts of this bird (including the sup- 1971 (BOU 1971). A record of Gould’s Petrel position that the bird was bought at the Chester P. brevipes from Cardiganshire in 1889 was market, the bird’s moribund state when found removed from the British List at the same time and confusion over the roles of the three New- because its origin seemed inadequately proven stead brothers – e.g. Evans 1994, Palmer 2000, (P. brevipes was then treated as a subspecies of Watola 2004) and this paper seeks to present a Collared Petrel P. leucoptera, although it is now true record of events. generally considered as a separate species, e.g. Gill & Wright 2006, Onley & Schofield 2007). In Kermadec Petrel 1971, BOURC concluded that Kermadec Petrel There are two subspecies of Kermadec Petrel, was relatively sedentary and had not been juana and neglecta, which differ only in size. unquestionably recorded beyond the Pacific. The nominate form neglecta breeds on a The Committee was also concerned about the number of islands in the South Pacific (Lord lack of details over the discovery of this extraor- Howe Island, Austral Pitcairn Islands and the dinary record. Kermadec Islands), while the larger juana 32 British Birds 101 • January 2008 • 31–38 Should Kermadec Petrel be on the British List? breeds on Juan Fernandez, San Ambrosio and The BOURC review San Felix Island, off the coast of Chile, but also The recent review of the Tarporley record was in the South Pacific. There is a small outlying prompted by Imber (2004), who suggested the population in the southwest Indian Ocean on existence of a small breeding population in the Round Island (Brooke et al. 2000). Outside the South Atlantic and that three dark-phase speci- breeding season, the species wanders beyond mens collected at Ilha da Trinidade, off Brazil the equator to 39°N in the central Pacific and to (two on 8th April 1913 and one on 28th 42°N in the western Pacific (contra Bannerman December 1975), had previously been over- & Lodge 1959), although some birds remain looked in collections as Trindade Petrel. They around the Kermadec Islands throughout the were reidentified by Imber as Kermadec by the year (Davies et al. 1991) and the species is a white primary shafts, although Tove (2005) sug- vagrant to New Zealand and eastern Australia. gested that Trindade could also show white Kermadec Petrel is polymorphic, with light, primary shafts. A sound recording of an dark and intermediate phases. Davies et al. apparent Kermadec Petrel had also been made (1991) found that, on Raoul Island, 17% were on Ilha de Trinidade (da Silva 1995), although light morph, 37% dark and 46% intermediate, no sonogram was available for analysis (Tove while the figures for Meyer Island were 9%, 2005). Imber also gave details of five extralim- 13% and 78% respectively. The dark phase of ital records of Kermadec in the North Atlantic: Kermadec Petrel is confusable with Trindade the Tarporley bird; one filmed at Hawk Moun- Petrel, which is also polymorphic (and treated tain, Pennsylvania, during a cyclone on 3rd here as a full species); hybridisation between October 1959 (Heintzelman 1961); and three Kermadec and Trindade Petrels is thought to records of dark-phase birds off North Carolina. occur on Round Island (Richard Dale pers. These last three records comprised sightings on comm.). Kermadec Petrels are iden- tifiable by the prominent pale primary shafts on the upperwing (e.g. Onley and Schofield 2007), of which the basal third at least is always white. Adult Trindade Petrels usually have dark primary shafts; these are sometimes pale at the base, although the pale area is never as extensive as on Kermadec Petrel (Brinkley & Patteson 1998). Apparent hybrids have horn- coloured primary shafts, with any white restricted to the very base of Tim Melling the feathers (Richard Dale pers. comm.). Plates 20–22 show the primary-shaft coloration of a Ker- madec Petrel, Trindade Petrel, and a presumed hybrid respectively. In 1908, the population of Ker- madec Petrels on Raoul Island (then known as Sunday Island) was esti- mated at 500,000 individuals (Iredale 1914). The Raoul population is now almost extinct, owing to predation by introduced domestic cats and rats, and harvesting by humans (Merton Tim Melling 1970).
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