An early morning rise with a departure from dwelling at 0530 hours is how final Sunday began. Our goal was a two-hour drive to the city of Rota on the SW Atlantic coast of Spain. With luck, we would have sufficient time to seize some breakfast within the port café earlier than we embarked. That efficiently achieved, we then walked the 300 or so metres to a small fishing boat that was ready to take us out to search for seabirds.
Pelagics are all the time filled with uncertainty. I’ve had great journeys however others, on the identical time of 12 months, which had been actually poor. Immediately there was no wind. That was welcomed by those that didn’t fancy six hours negotiating the Atlantic swells however I used to be nervous. No wind normally means no birds. Many seabirds depend on wind for easy flight and I suspected there wasn’t going to be a lot within the air. We simply needed to hope that we would discover rafts of sitting birds however that, after all, is like in search of the proverbial needle. The open ocean resembles a desert during which sand has been changed by water. You may journey for miles and miles throughout an empty ocean. Then, discover an upwelling, a pod of feeding dolphins or a trawler citing its nets, and also you hit the jackpot.
How do these seabirds discover meals on this huge vacancy? Many have a superb sense of scent and they can detect meals from many miles away. Others, reminiscent of gulls and skuas, merely be careful for big gatherings of seabirds within the horizon. We had been crusing for the higher a part of an hour with not a fowl in sight once we began seeing a couple of shearwaters flying low over the horizon. As we bought nearer to them, others appeared and shortly we had been amongst a number of rafts. As anticipated, there wasn’t a lot flying, the birds ready for the wind to select up. It gave us a possibility to watch these birds at comparatively shut quarters as they weren’t eager to take off. Cory’s (Calonectris borealis) and Scopoli’s Shearwaters (Calonectris diomedea) had been the primary species, largely the previous.
However we additionally picked up Sooty Shearwater (Ardenna grisea), Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus), Balearic Shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus) and the gorgeous Nice Shearwater (Ardenna gravis). The odd Pomarine Skua (Stercorarius pomarinus) and Arctic Skua (Stercorarius parasiticus) confirmed themselves at a distance however Nice Skuas (Stercorarius skua), normally frequent presently of 12 months, had been lacking altogether. We have now seen the impression of avian flu on some seabirds that had been as soon as common and plentiful in these waters. It’s not simply Nice Skuas, Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) are additionally noticeably down.
After spending time watching and photographing the rafts, we determined to push on in the direction of the coastal shelf. As soon as six miles out, we began seeing Wilson’s (Oceanites oceanicus) and European Storm Petrels (Hydrobates pelagicus), a couple of providing fleeting glimpses as they skimmed low and quick on the horizon. A few miles additional and we had been seeing storm petrels extra continuously than as much as that time. We determined it was time to decelerate and put some chum on the water. Ideally, this might appeal to the odour-sensitive storm petrels and shearwaters. Then it was a matter of ready, and also you do should be affected person. Transfer away too quickly and also you danger the birds not having had time to achieve the supply of the chum.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than we had half-a-dozen Wilson’s Storm Petrels round us, with the occasional European Storm Petrel amongst them.
We began taking images oblivious of what was to return. Increasingly storm petrels stored coming, feeding across the boat, fairly shut. They began “strolling on the water”, a typical behaviour that apparently earned them the identify petrel. The phrase was first recorded in 1703 by the English explorer William Dampier, basing himself on the sooner (~1670) phrase pitteral. The fowl’s behavior of skimming over the ocean recalled St Peter the apostle’s stroll on the Sea of Galilee, petrel being a diminutive of Peter.
Time handed and I took my eyes away from the digicam. A spectacle unfolded in entrance of me. No fewer than fifty Wilson’s Storm Petrels feeding near the boat, in a single flock! We went for a depend of the numbers seen to us and we misplaced depend at 100. Time flew by and it was time to return to port. Staying in a single place had paid off!
We returned with an escort of gulls, Cory’s and Scopoli’s Shearwaters. As we disembarked and set off for a beautiful seafood lunch in a restaurant proper on the port, it was the Wilson’s spectacle that dominated the dialog across the desk.
