Manic morning

large falcon coming out of the sun!

I stepped on deck in the early morning light to be greeted by a Little egret coming up from the south and flying high over the ship. Five minutes later a large, pale falcon sp. came out of the sun like a well trained fighter pilot, went hurtling past the bridge at ridiculous speed and re-appeared some 300 metres ahead of me and just kept going NW- gone in 10 seconds! I toyed with the idea that I had just glimpsed my first ever Lanner?, but I must admit to not really having a clue and don't think I'll ever know. A swallow bravely followed in its' flightpath several minutes later. 

Sea watching was great too! 3 nice lines of shearwaters- 26 Cory's and 5 Balearics came down wind and I also recorded 4 great skuas, 2 gannets, 3 Med. gulls, 4 LBB gulls, and a yellow-legged gull. A distant humpback whale (Megaptera novanglea) was a great distraction for over an hour as it breached repeatedly and lunge fed at the surface. Several schools of tuna sp. also provided additional interest. Then it was 10:00 hours and time for coffee and cake!

large, pale falcon just kept going!

The afternoon was spent watching the shearwaters as they danced over the waves!

Race row?

A quiet weekend with Saturdays' only birds of note being a couple of Balearic shearwaters. Visible migration turned up a couple of LBJ's that remained unidentified due to distance and sunlight in my face. Today was a little more interesting- my early morning sea watch turned up 2 gannets, 2 great skuas, 3 Cory's and the usual larus suspects. Two passerines briefly boarded the ship- a robin and a rather splendid yellow wagtail which alerted me to its' presence with a nice overhead flight call. It landed on the most inaccessible part of the ship, hence the distant photos- grrrr.

Now, I don't intend going off on one, concerning the identification of the numerous races of these splendid birds (because it has all been covered elsewhere) except to say that initially I thought this was a 'thunbergi'. However, looking at it closely it has a white, sub-moustachial stripe (admittedly not too apparent on my wretched photos) and this I believe is a characteristic of the 'cinereocapilla' race found in Italy? I readily admit to struggling with the finer I/D points of wagtail races and would welcome any input on this. When all's said and done it's always a pleasure to see these birds as they are scarce in the north and as I have not seen one on my local patch these birds are a bit of a treat!

The doldrums

I was rather disheartened during the morning, as with a flat calm sea I saw a further 5 migrant corpses floating past- including a larger bird that looked like a kestrel. I'm surprised that such a strong flyer ended up drowning, and have little hope for many of the much smaller, weaker birds that tried to negotiate the sea crossing during the recent bad weather. Anyway with such little breeze today, most of my seabird counts consisted of loafing Cory's and the usual larus sp. gulls sitting about on the sea. With minimal seabird action and fine conditions I had great hopes for some vis mig goodies but this was also rather limited with just 6 Stonechats and a flock of 12 duck sp. heading north. 

All the stonechats adopted the same strategy in that they each dropped onto a part of the ship, hung around for 10 or 15 minutes catching flies and small moths and then resumed their northward passage. At least we were steaming north at 5 knots so it felt good to give them a helping hand! 

With such unusually calm conditions it was possible to see into the water and admire a few medusae so I tried a couple of snaps to pass the time.

Silhouettes

Got onto a huge raptor today! Well actually as we all know a dark bird against a light background looks far bigger than it is, and similarly a light coloured bird against a dark background does too- correctly sizing birds with little visual reference to other objects is often the bane of my sea watching experience. Anyway, at 500 metres range, despite looking the size of a large eagle, the jizz of this bird screamed 'marsh harrier' although thoughts of booted eagle and even black kite initially floated through my head. It stayed on the wrong side of 300 metres and was against the sun as it flew past our port side, so I couldn't get much on it but I think it was a marshy?

This afternoon we had changed our heading by 180 degrees so that the sun was then on the starboard side- and of course this great skua decided to also keep pretty much in the sun by flying down that side!










Finished the day with half a dozen common dolphins too, but again they didn't want to be photographed!

Mortal migrants.

A pleasant morning with much improved sea state (3) and good visibility to the horizon so I decided a couple of hours counting the still sparsely distributed seabirds would be a good option, as I would probably pick up any cetacean activity during the survey as well. The first hour turned up small numbers of Cory's shearwater,  3 Med. gulls, a distant Great skua, and a smattering of the ubiquitous lesser black-backed and yellow legged gulls. As we headed north about 20 nm offshore I noticed a relatively sizeable group of distant larus spp. gulls ahead- about 20 birds in total. They were engaged in typical gull behaviour- some resting on the sea, other small groups of 3-4 birds were squabbling and chasing birds with full beaks, which I presumed was fish or squid. Closer scrutiny however revealed that the birds were engaged in scavenging dead passerines from the sea. I stood at the starboard rail and counted 11 corpses within about 20 metres of the ship over the course of about 10 minutes. As the gulls were busy eating and plucking birds from the sea over a distance out to approx. 400 metres I can only presume that the dead birds were fairly evenly spread over a sizeable area. As some of the gulls were sat contentedly on the sea I had the distinct impression that they were full! It was not possible to quantify how many dead birds were in the wreck - it could have been scores or even hundreds! 

Although this is undoubtedly a natural occurrence it is one that I have never witnessed before on such a scale. I have previously seen the likes of quail crash into the sea and have also seen the occasional meadow pipit and skylark fall into the sea in a strong, persistent head wind. I presume that the long, hard storm over the weekend, coupled with the dense sand and dust caused these migrants difficulties somewhere over the sea. They could have been much further north at one stage and blown back south by the storm. On a brighter note a trickle of northward bound migrants have continued past the ship this afternoon, including a swallow, a blackcap, a black redstart, a couple of alba/yarrellii wagtails and another feral type pigeon.

Lifer!

I had not intended to write anything today, although the morning was spent pleasantly enough counting at least 45 Cory's shearwaters, 5 Med. gulls and 3 yellow-legged gulls. There was also an unidentified passerine that overflew the vessel at great speed in the (still) force 6 nor-westerly. Not sure if it really wanted to go off in a south-easterly direction at this time of year but I suppose you can only battle a head wind for so long when you probably weigh less than 25 grams! It would probably have settled on deck if it had not been so busy with crew using jet-washers to get rid of the last remnants of the sand and dust left all over the ship by the recent blow.

Anyway the afternoon was particularly dull until just after 17:00 local time when a small falcon caught my eye as it approached the ship from the south. I initially thought 'kestrel'. The bird continued approaching, banked in the weakening sun, showing a rusty mantle, black-tipped wings and greyish head so I lowered the camera as I already had reasonable shots of kestrel. The bird disappeared behind the heli-deck, reappeared and perched near the spare paravane on the port side. Getting the bird in my bins showed a uniform pale grey head with plain grey cheek, sparse speckling on the breast and flanks and noticeably long wings- it was a Lesser Kestrel!- and a cracking adult male at that! Being a life tick generated a bit of a rush (casual understatement). Fortunately I don't think anyone saw me as I became a 'transformer' and got myself into an outrageous tangle of arms, head, binocular strap, camera strap and vhf radio as I tried to get the camera operational.  To my complete horror the bird flicked its' wings and tail and looked as if it was about to flit, fortunately it settled again allowing me to take a couple of shots in the less than ideal light. I managed half a dozen shots from 40 metres or so before it flew up, over and around the ship and was lost to view somewhere over the waves. Quite an interesting encounter and all in 4-5 metre swell, 15 degree rolls to port and starboard and under 90 seconds! Phew- I need a lie down! ;)

Lesser kestrel

Lesser kestrel

Gale force Kestrel

This beauty got blown in this morning and the better light allowed for decent photos. Upon touching down it was really struggling to balance due to the buffeting of the wind and the movement of the ship. This afternoon we passed through a small area of increased marine productivity it seems as there was a flock of 6 Corys' and 1 Balearic shearwater, accompanied by 5 Common dolphins that came in to briefly bow ride our vessel.

Dragons n Poms

Heavy weather all night and a confused sea state all day so I'm a tad tired now. Just two birds seen today- an adult and juvenile Pomarine skua did a brief flypast. Apart from that I spent an hour attempting to photograph the numerous dragonflies that have been blown offshore by the storm. We have started our dog-leg NW and then tomorrow morning we will turn SW to head into the next part of this rotating storm system. Hopefully things will settle back down on monday.....

The closer I look at the fine detail of the wing structure the more captivated by it I become! This got me thinking about life, the universe and everything- subjects which alway ruffle my emotional feathers when I think toooooo much! I suddenly found myself in a far too serious mood, so I had to have a word with myself and went for tea and choccy biscuits and this helped me realise (yet again) that in spite of all my pondering the best answer to those big questions is still 42! ;) (as provided in the 'Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy'- for those of you that never read it!)