Fea's Petrel & More on this weekend's Pelagic trips

Fea,s Petrel

Fea,s Petrel

                                                                Great Shearwater

                                                                   Great Shearwater

                                                                      Great Shearwater

                                                                   Great Shearwater

                                                                     Great Shearwater

                                                            2nd Summer Pomarine Skua

Wilsons Petrel

have just finished five days pelagic trips in a row on one of our Birder Special pelagic weekends. We have seen a wide variety of well-sought after seabirds and many participants saw one or more new birds (lifers). The highlight for everybody was the very rare FEA’S PETREL on Friday evening. There are probably in the region of only 700 pairs breeding in Cape Verde and the Desertas (maybe even less). It is a very special moment to observe this Pterodroma petrel at sea and the atmosphere on the boat was electric.

There was another highlight on Sunday. This year has been exceptionally poor with only three records of WILSON'S STORM-PETREL in Britain (two of those off Scilly). However, we managed to pull one in at the eleventh hour. It flew past the port side of the boat as we were packing up, and seemed to head away and off, but then it turned around and flew back to the boat and everyone got great views.

We also saw Great Shearaters on all but one day and the views were simply stunning. The photographers filled their boats, so to speak. Apart from seabirds, we saw a good selection of cetaceans and two species of shark. Here is a complete list of sightings with numbers seen in brackets.

Birds

Fea's Petrel (1)

Great Shearwater (10)

Sooty Shearwater (4)

Balearic Shearwater (2)

Manx Shearwater (perhaps 1,000+)

Wilson's Storm-petrel (1)

European Storm-petrel (270)

Grey Phalarope (2)

Great Skua (10)

Pomarine Skua (1)

Arctic Skua (1)

Yellow-legged Gull (several)

Several species of tern

Cetaceans etc

Minke Whale (1)

Bottlenose Dolphin (c. 50)

Risso's Dolphin (2)

Common Dolphin (300+)

Porbeagle Shark (2)

Blue Shark (6)

Ocean Sunfish (15)