| Case Summary for:
Submission No 377: King Penguin Aptenodytes patagonicus; Fortescue Bay, TAS. 1st - 2nd March 2003. Submitted by: Roger Nichols.
Verdict: Accepted This submission concerns a single King Penguin seen and photographed at Southern end of Fortescue Bay beach SE Tasmania, on the 1st March 2003. Multiple observers saw the bird prior to its (reported) relocation by national parks and wildlife personnel on the 7th March 2003. Given the species is so distinctive field notes were not taken. However, photographs (from several observers) serve to verify the record and these have been presented to the committee for review. The photographs clearly depict a moulting individual with the diagnostic bill shape and pale feathering around the ear coverts, isolated from any pale feathering on the fore-neck or breast, eliminate Emperor Penguin Aptenodytes forsteri. The patchiness of feathering below the flipper, suggest it had been ashore for several days before it was found Committee members resolved to accept the record unanimously. Although
numerous 'mainland' (including Tasmania) reports exist this is only the
second to be accepted by BARC. The first was from Bruny Island, Tasmania
on the 1st April 1988 (BARC Case No. 138).
· Marchant, S. & Higgins, P.J. (Eds) 1990: Handbook of
Australian, New Zealand & Antarctic Birds. Vol. 1, Ratites to
Ducks, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Tony Palliser
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