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| European Storm Petrel |
To put it mildly, my sea bird list is rubbish! So when I heard my good friends Nick and Anne were planning to do an all-day Pelagic from Falmouth I asked if I could join them. The trip was run by AK Wildlife cruises with whom Nick and Anne had had a very good day with last September. With a 10:30 boat departure we had arranged to stay the previous night in the Heston Premier Inn some 25 minutes’ drive from Falmouth. I had a family event to attend at lunch time and so departed for Cornwall around 14:00. As the drive progressed the weather got worse and worse, very stormy with torrential rain and very little visibility which did not bode well for a trip in a small boat far out to sea!
We met in the pub adjacent to the Premier Inn for dinner, a 5 out of 10 meal which seems to be the standard these days for pub food and sorted out logistics for the next day. Overnight the stormy weather showed no sign of abating but by the time we met for breakfast at 07:30 it was starting to clear and the forecast was for a slow improvement during the course of the day. Nick is now nicknamed “Mr muffin” for the number he put away at breakfast, strangely he seemed to have also brought a large quantity of identical muffins with him from home for lunch!
I picked up a sandwich for lunch on route to Nick’s recommended free parking spot in Falmouth and we met again at the marina where the rest of the days trippers slowly assembled, 12 in all a mixture of birders and day trippers. Being my first Pelagic, this was very much a learning exercise for me and I made two fundamental mistakes. The first was sitting at the back of the boat which meant that we were often trying to view birds through the head and shoulders of everyone in front of us. The second was taking my large 500mm prime lens, see below.
The water was comparatively calm as we made our way out from the harbour and a Shag sat on a buoy watched us with interest as we went by. We soon ran into the first birding interest of the day, a flock of mixed age Gannets frantically feeding on a shoal of fish. As we left the comparative shelter of Falmouth’s large bay the swell increased and the problem with the relatively bulky 500m/R5 combination became very apparent, it was almost impossible to focus on a bird as the boat moved up and down and from side to side. There was also the added worry of slipping and dropping the whole expensive bundle over the side! Nick was much more successful with his 100-400 zoom lens and I would certainly look to take something similar on my next Pelagic.
The plan was to head west down to the Lizard and from there move further out into the open ocean and, hopefully, into the flight path of migrating seabirds. Not far from the comfort of Falmouth harbour we ran into a small flock of our first target bird of the day, the European Storm Petrel. Perhaps surprisingly, this was a UK tick for me – I told you my seabird list was crap! I could not help but compare the confidence and ease with which these diminutive little birds, hardly bigger than a Sparrow, coped with the turbulent sea to the awkwardness of us clumsily humans totally out of our comfort zone while rocking about inelegantly in our little boat. This bird is strongly migratory spending our winter mainly off the coasts of South Africa and Namibia, with some birds stopping in the seas adjoining West Africa, and a few remaining near their Mediterranean breeding islands. It is strictly oceanic outside the breeding season and, in comparison to the above, is very uncomfortably and ungainly on land where it only comes to once a year to breed.
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| European Storm Petrel |
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| Record shot of Wilson's Storm Petrel |
When Nick reviewed his photo’s he realised that he had also seen the much rarer Wilson’s Petrel which differs from its common cousin in that it has long dangly legs which stick out beyond its tail in flight and a much more pronounced white rump.
We saw more Storm Petrels coasting effortlessly over the waves as we progressed down the coast. A shout went out for a somewhat distant Sooty Shearwater, another UK tick for me. Seen well the Sooty Shearwater is actually not black at all but chocolate brown but it does appears black in poor light. As per its Shearwater name, it glides effortlessly over the waves dipping from side to side on stiff wings with the wingtips almost touching the water. They breed in our winter in the southern hemisphere on small islands in the south Pacific and south Atlantic oceans. They are long distance migrants reaching as far north as the subarctic and are typically seen off the west coast of the UK in August and September on route back to their southern breeding grounds.
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| Sooty Shearwater |
Now here’s an interesting factoid I found while researching the Sooty Shearwater for this blog, they were the inspiration for Hitchcock’s famous “The Birds” film after thousands of apparently crazed Sooty Shearwaterswere sighted on the shores of Monterey in California, regurgitating anchovies, flying into objects, and dying on the streets!
From the Lizard we moved further out to sea where the swell was higher and I pretty much gave up on photography. We saw large numbers of Manx Shearwaters and also Dolphins but, despite looking for several hours, no large Shearwaters. This was a little disappointing as significant numbers of Cory’s Shearwater were seen from both Pendeen and Porthgwarra during the day.
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| Manx Shearwater |
On the way back to Falmouth we saw a Fin Whale, a species of Cetacea I had not seen before. The Fin Whale is the second largest Cetacea after the Blue Whale and can weigh up to 70 Tonnes. We saw the characteristic “there she blows” as the resurfacing whale blew water from its blow hole and I had one good view of it as it dived – a truly impressive beast which I felt most privileged to see.
My special thanks to Nick and Anne for organising the trip and putting up with my company, including an attempt to knock Anne out with my lens during the day.
My blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
Productive collaboration and good photos. I always feel really sea sick trying to look through a view finder and keep everything steady. Well done all.
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