A nautical safari on the high seas - Part 3

The Safari has met up with RL, our Extreme Photographer, in Poland, almost did so in Perth, Australia, and now he was waiting for us at the dock gates in Porto, Portugal - well Leixoes actually as the city of Porto isn't quite on the coast but a little way up the Douro river. Close enough for the 'P's we guess - where next, Papua? Paraguay? Palau would be good! 

WE nearly didn't make it to the dock gate and almost certainly wouldn't have done had we had our scope with us as there were thousands of gulls of all shapes and sizes to scan through. Tempting as they were we didn't stop for more than the briefest of perusals. Beside the dock gate there was a tiny garden with a shrine in it. RL had already seen a good variety of birds while waiting for us to walk up from the ship. He soon put us onto Spotless Starlings, unphotographable again, a couple of White Wagtails, Serins, several Pied Flycatchers, Black Redstart, a Spotted Flycatcher and a Chiffchaff...a busy little corner or greenery and suggestive of a bit of an overnight fall before the morning mist descended. RL had found a park close by worthy of exploration, he'd already seen a Night Heron in there when walking throughdown to the docks to meet us, so off we went along the beach. The mist was pretty thick so we didn't stop to look at the big gull roost on the sands. Making our way to another old fort sat out on another rocky promontory we found an out of context Pied Flycatcher and yet more busy Black Redstarts, do they ever sit still? The outer rocks by the surf held a small number of Turnstones.

Once in the park we passed a lake, one of several in the park, the recently planted saplings along one side of it held yet more Pied Flycatchers.

Skimming around the lake were several Swallows, a species we'd so far seen very few of. Deeper into the park we'd discover that Pied Flycatchers were probably the most numerous bird with Spotted Flycatchers someway behind in second place.

On a small patch of dry lawn something small and white caught our eye, not a tiny scrap of paper but a Vestal moth. This species is resident here but a usually scarce migrant to southern Britain but can occasionally occur in large numbers.

On our travels to a second lake we bumped into JC who put us on to an Iberian Green Woodpecker feeding alongside the path 50 yards away, while watching that a Kingfisher sped across the lake beside us. Somewhere in the reeds sounding this lake was the Night Heron RL had seen earlier but there was no sign of it now.

So far this trip we hadn't seen any lizards, mainly due to the nightmare cat situaution in the previous places. RL is a lizard finder extraordinaire and it was his mission to show us some. Apparently he'd seen very few since travelling around Portugal since the spring. A likely looking wall in the distance was aimed for but on the way we got side tracked by a the number of Jays flying to and fro collecting acorns. They came out of the trees without warning and soon disappeared behind intervening foliage so getting a pic was nigh on impossible until one landed low down on a tree not too far away but annoyingly in deep shade.

The sun had now mostly burnt off the mist but cool sea frets still wafted their chilly dampness across the park from time to time making everything very atmospheric, not the best conditions for finding lizards. A sunny wall was scanned from a distance, RL had said that the few lizards he had seen so far were all very skittish and unapproachable. And just like that he found one, a small juvenile having a good play at being Spiderman.

And then just a yard or so beyond that one he found another in the grass at the base of the wall - how'd he spotted that???

Walking quietly along the wall but well away from it gave us more sightings, trying to creep closer for a definitive view was very difficult, any hint of movement and they bolted into their favourite hidey-hole. Occasionally one would get caught out too far from the safety of a crack in the blockwork and would freeze for a few moments before deciding to make a dash for it.

Eventually, after numerous failures, we did get a reasonably close up pic.

There are several similar species found in this area and we may have got pics of more than one of them but they are all very variable and very hard to tell apart.
After a brew and butties back his van we carried on our search for more reptiles. It was warmer now the mist was completely gone and butterflies were on the wing, and mostly not for settling. There were many blues, many very tatty coming towards the end of their season and most not able to be identified as we couldn't get a good look at their underwings. With persistence did find most to be Lang's Short Tailed Blue and Geranium Bronze. No idea what this very tatty one is though.

Most of the other butterflies were Large and Small Whites and we had at least one Red Admiral and several Speckled Woods. 

Around a smaller pond we came across another reptile, a fallen long reaching into the water just screamed 'terrapins' and sure enough a quick check with the bins gave us an Iberian Pond Turtle exactly where we would have expected one to be.

Also around this pond were a few dragonflies and damselflies. Emperor dragonfly was also seen at several other ponds but Blue Tailed Damselflies, an unidentified species of damselfly, the really bright Scarlet Darter and stunning Violet Dropwing dragonflies were only seen here.

And showing how it got its name.

The second best bird in the book was also on the pond, or is it third best now we've seriously upgraded Sabine's Gull?

Other ponds had large populations of feral geese, Grey Lags, including farmyard types, Canada Geese, including some dodgy looking hybrids, and several Egyptian Geese which we don't see very often.

We did our utmost to avoid the pair of Muscovy Ducks, out of the 10,000 or so species of birds these come in at 11,000th in our list of favourites, other than being bloody awful looking things we don't know what they've done to deserve that accolade. A Common Sandpiper flitted around the pool too.

A much larger lake was visited next and here we saw another non-native horror, many huge Koi Carp.

No wonder there were few dragonflies on the other pools any living thing will have long been sucked up by these monsters. And they were breeding, warm shallow areas had tens of thousands of fry, far too many  for that Kingfisher we saw earlier to make a dent in their numbers. One stretch of the margins of this pond had a reasonable fringe of emergent vegetation and on our drier side a lot of Spearmint plants, giving off a lovely scent as you we walked over it. Marsh Frogs jumped out of way as we walked along the banks trying to find a Grass Snake (any snake would do) sunning itself. The last time we saw these we were in Poland with RL all those years ago. At last we came across one that didn't jump out of our way.

A sunny shorter patch of grass had another species of blue butterfly. Another very fluttery one that we kept getting brief views of the underside of but it wouldn't stay still enough with its wings up for a pic. We got an upperwing pic but then all blues look very much the same from above. Checking in the field guide we'd brought with us back on the ship later it transpired to be a female Mazarine Blue.

Another pond/lake gave us more turtles, this time though they were almost all introduced American species, namely Red Eared Slider/Terrapin and Eastern Painted Turtle (in some books Eastern Swamp Slider). There were a couple of native turtles in the mix too but now we know there are two possible species we're not sure which we've seen, they are quite similar, Iberian Pond Turtle and Stripe Necked Turtle.

Walking back by the big lizard wall we had another look but now the sun was off it and the lizards already warmed up there were none to be found. The day was warm now and the bird action had died down too, hardly any Pied Flycatchers were to be seen. Time to head back to the ship and say our goodbyes and thanks for a marvelous lizard spotting day to RL. Going through the last much more open bit of the park there was a low wall, more a row of blocks of stone hawkeyed RL spotted the last lizard of the day basking on the top of one of them.

We left RL at the dock gates and walked back to the ship but seeing far fewer gulls on the quayside, he went back to his van in the park to drive up the coast towards the Spanish border to find a campsite for the night before his next leg of his Iberian adventure into the hills and mountains of Galicia. It had been great to catch up.

The following day was a full sea day across the mouth of the Bay of Biscay. There was a stiff breeze in our face and as the day wore on the sea became rather, lumpy, unpleasantly so for some aboard.

It was hard work watching, too windy and workmen on the forward observation deck, forecastle closed, and one side of deck three being covered in spray. Not that there was much to see. Finding whale blows among the trillions of whitecaps was never going to be easy. There were a few and JR even managed a pic of a close Fin Whale.

Blows from Sperm Whales and Humpbacked Whales were also seen, a couple of each. JC had a brief view of a Beaked Whale but too brief even for his very experienced eyes to determine which species. Seabirds were few and far between too with only the shearwaters making any kind of showing.

At breakfast JC told the rest of us that soemone had reported a brown moth somewhere on the ship. What we din't expect is for someone to come up to us and say "is that a moth?", pointing at the floor behind us. Yikes - who's smuggled a dog on board? - we'd better go back to the cabin and get a poobag (we never travel without a pocket full). No a dog wasn't on board. It was 'just' a Deathshead Hawkmoth. We've never seen one before, narrowly missing a dead one on the prom at the end of last summer was the closest we've got to one.

It stayed put for ages and became very popular with the guests, so much so that a deckhand had to come and rope it off. But not before hundreds of pics just like this one of ours had been taken.

As the weather worsened we had the dilema of what to do with it. Spray was flying everywhere, if we put it in a safe place it would no doubt be attracted to the ship's lights again and move. The final decision was that one of us would have to take it home for release in NW England where it might stand a bit more of a chance than it would a 100 miles or more out to sea. So it was duly potted up, only just fitted in the pots JC had brought, and fridged until it was time to disembark in a couple of days time. The log call in the bar that evening didnt take very long!

The sea was, shall we say, 'interesting' overnight but not as bad as our Canada trip a couple of autumns ago, only reaching beaufort 8 going on 9 rather than 10 going on 11+ but we awaoke to the amazing sight of hundreds of shearwaters slipstreaming the boat. Mostly Great Shearwaters but also Cory's (no Scopoli's so we couldn't add them to our British list), several Sootys and a couple of hundred Manx Shearwaters accompanied us - a proper real life 'Attenborough moment'.

BT called a flock of Storm Petrels but unfortuantely we couldn't pick the tiny scraps of feathers up in the heavy sea. And still more shearwaters came...

As we were now in the Celtic Sea we expected dolphins and sure enough several pods came into the ship but picking them up at any distance was impossible so they were upon us before we had much of a chance to react. We eneded  up 'firing from the hip' just pointing the camera hopefully in their direction and holding the shutter button down until they'd gone and hoping for the best...and this was the best we got.

Once again the evening log call wasn't a protracted affair.

We reached as far north as Bardsey Island and the Lleyn Peninsula as it went dark, in the morning we'd awake back in Liverpool.

All that remains to be said is a huge thank you to the other members of the OWE team, the guests who chatted with us through thick n thin and especially those who kindly allowed us to use their images. We can't forget Fred Olsen cruise's crew and staff who always look after us so well. But mostly to IH who put us forward for the trip after he'd had to withdraw for unfortunate family reasons. 

It's back on terra firma for us for the foreseeable now.

Oh and that one species short of our Challenge target??? There were two Black Terns a minor detour away on the way back to Base Camp but we were too knackered to take advantage of them. Thankfully they were still there in the morning so we picked up CR and headed out.

165 species of birds photographed within 75 miles of Base Camp - Target reached we can relax for the next three months...oh no we can't we've upped the target to 170.

Where to next? We've got a couple of safari's lined up to tell you about next week.

In the meantime let us know who's racing up undetected in your outback.

A nautical safari on the high seas - Part 2

The Safari spent the night aboard ship at Gibraltar so the day started with a scan of the Rock before bereakfast. There wasn't much moving again but a flock of five herons heading out to sea provided the first interest of the day when the middle one of the five wasn't a Grey Heron but a Purple Heron.

Some of the guests had taken an early morning dolphin watching cruise and came back with tales of a huge pod of maybe as many as 500 Common Dolphins and smaller numbers of Striped Dolphins...despite scanning from the decks we only managed to see a couple of distant splashes close to the ships moored up offshore awaiting orders which could have been either species.

Eventually it was time to set sail across the strait to the Spanish enclave of Cueta; a bit like Gibraltar is to Spain, Cueta is a sticky-out bit owned by Spain but geographically in Morocco. Anyway it would be a new 'tick' for us, we've never set foot on the African continent before. Once we were in open water we passed another pod of Long Finned Pilot Whales and had a flock of around 30 Black Terns winging their way across the water. As we approached Cueta harbour the radio crackled, it was AB telling us there was a large pod of Striped Dolphins in the distance. We scanned and scanned but couldn't pick them up and relayed this to him...look the other side of the ship was the reply. Hazy and a long way off but yes he was right there were a lot of them. One of our grotty sequence of shots shows 22 at the surface so going on the premis that for every one you see at the surface there may be as many as six or even ten beneath there could be somewhere between 120 and 220 in that pod.

Once ashore we soon spotted African exotica like House Sparrow and Collared Dove, the Spotless Starlings were just as hard to get a pic of here as they had been in Gibraltar. We soon heard African Blue Tit calling in the trees opposite the old fort but getting a good view of one with its more strongly marked head pattern and all blue back proved frustrating...and no chance of a pic. The fort had an impressive moat but we weren't for hanging around for the culture and heritage - oh no we had habitat to find and BT's phone map was showing the way.

The map showed a promising area of formal parkland to explore a few hundred yards away but when we got there it was surrounded by a high wall topped with threatening looking barbed wire, we could see a church clock tower within so thought it might be a monestery or something and there might be a graveyard to wander round if we could find a way in. No such luck the main entrance looked very military - we weren't going to get in there. Nearby BT's map showed a bit of greenery suggesting a barranco with some adjacent allotment gardens so we left the main street and headed down a dusty side track past cars that had been parked up for months. A Sardinian Warbler scolded us as we passed by and a new bird for the trip called before being spotted, Common Bulbul. The track opened out a bit and we found ourselves in a bit of a shanty town with a gang of kids playing football, not the place to start lifting the cameras...and then the dogs started barking, sounded as if there were a few more than plenty Hounds of the Baskervilles down there and all probaly rabid...and then the newly named B*stard African Elbow Flies started biting...and then AB spotted a woman brushing her teeth...andf then she started shouting at us...time for an about turn and a hasty exit back to the tarmaced streets in case whe had some friends we really didn't want to meet. A bit of an adventure, we certainly saw some of Cueta 99.9999% of tourists won't see!

We still needed birds, and reptiles - none of us had seen a reptile yet apart from AB seeing an introduced Iberian Pond Turtle in one of the ornamental ponds in the Botantic Gardens. He did say last time he was there there were Wall Lizards everywhere. Sadly now there were dozens of boxes and food dishes put out for feral cats, both in Gibraltar and Cueta, no wonder we couldn't find any reptiles. Where could we go, a car park lead down the side of large building for a 'safer' view of the barranco, it turned out to be a hospital/health centre and it was closing for the night. At the back of the building was a little grassy area with a few trees where we heard African Blue Tit again and saw a Spotted Flycatcher and couple of too-quick-for-us Common Bulbuls.

In the shrubbery at the front of the building we found some more Geranium Bronze butterflies.

A combination of heat and hunger sent us back to the ship where we recuperated after our African adventure and waited for JC who'd gone on a solo hike up to the reservoirs up the hill close to the Moroccan border. With the ship soon to sail he was still nowhere to be seen but he did make it back in time, not quite the last man aboard.

The sunset over the straits was a spectacle

The hills on the far left rose up quite sharply to rocky peaks topped with view points at which we could see tiny figures enjoying the view. Above them circled dozens of raptors, probably mostly Honey Buzzards but too far away and too dark to tell for sure. Here's a pic by JC from while he was up by the reservoirs not far from those hills.

Next stop - Cadiz back in Europe. 

We were off the ship immediately after breakfast and adjacent to the dock was a nice little linear almost formal park to the right of this impressive avenue leading to the city centre.

Can't believe we've not shown you a pic of a Yellow Legged Gull yet, seeing as how we'd seen thousands of them by now. Here's one on a statue on the look out for some unwary tourist with breakfast.

The park was nice and cool with lots of House Sparrows and a variety of parakeets including these Monk Parakeets, Ring Necked Parakeets and the larger Alexandrine Parakeets.

The park's water feature culminated (or started) at a large waterfall.

which you could overlook from the walkway above - or sneak through the behind the scenes passage for a look out from behind (or through) the falling waters.

There weren't many small birds about suggesting there hadn't been a fall overnight. We left the park and had a wander along the seafront. Some reef-like rocks below the seawall held a few Ringed Plovers, mostly juveniles, and a handful of Turnstones.

More Yellow Legged Gulls hung around the rocks or searched the rock pools for edible morsels.

A Spotless Starling was heard singing from out on the rocks and eventually found - what was it doing out there?

It turned out to be the only one we got a pic of all trip, they're not the easiest of little blighters to get the camera on despite them being fairly numerous in the ports we stopped at.
Ducking between the parked cars along the wall we snuck up on a Turnstone that was gleaning some invisible foodstuff from the brickwork.

Further on we came across the best bird in the book, a splendid adult Mediterranean Gull.

Unfortunately we also saw hundreds more feral cat shelters laid out among the rocks below the seawall, deffo no reptiles here now! A sit down on the causeway leading to an old fort gave us many more Ringed Plovers on the beach along with a few Sanderlings, they'd have to feed up quick as the beach was filling up quickly with people as the morning drew on.

After seeing a handful of Cattle Egrets going past a large flock of larger white birds flying over the bay caught our eye, our first thought was Great White Egrets but the bins showed that to be wrong, they were Spoonbills. That's the largest flock of Spoonbills we've ever seen and the pic doesn't show all of them.

It was time to wander into town passing a very confiding Yellow Legged Gull on the way.

A boaty scene reminiscent of St Ives in Cornwall we thought.

Cadiz is an attractive town with an impressive cathedral

All those cat boxes are among the top rocks in the jumble of sea defences.

When the mediaeval architects designed the cathedral and plazza you'd have thought they'd have got their time machines out and constructed it in to a design that it would fit in the frame of a 21st Century phone camera! What numpties eh!

Successfully avoiding the pick-pockets down the crowded main drag we made it back to the park where we took some lovely shots of the Monk Parakeets, miles better than the earlier one but managed to carelessly delete them before processing - what a numpty eh!

The ride out of Cadiz was late afternoon so we had plenty of daylight for spotting. The outer harbour area held plenty of gulls including the most Mediterranean Gulls we'd seen so far. As we passed one of the last jettys JC pointed out a young Audouin's Gull sat with the other gulls on the harbour wall from his lofty perch on Deck 6. Most of those of us on the Forecastle on Deck 4 got onto it.

Once out at sea we started seeing shearwaters again. This time Scopoli's Shearwaters outnumbered Cory's Shearwater, by over 2-1. We got our best count of Balearic Shearwaters too and a weird almost Fulmar-like leucistic Cory's Shearwater. Here's a couple of pics by BT showing the difference between Cory's and Scopoli's Shearwaters.

Did you spot the difference? The Cory's always fly to the right, the Scopoli's to the left!!! Easy-peasy! Now look at the amount of white showing on the underside of the wingtip, not at all easy to pick out in real time but there was another clue, almost all the birds photographed and seen as Scopoli's were in moult whereas the Cory's weren't. Here's a trio of our pics - have a stab at IDing them.

How did you get on? We're pretty sure all three are Scopoli's. On the top pic there's just a hint of white fingers on the primaries and a little moult BUT it could be the angle the wing is being held at and there's a bit of light coming through the primaries making it a Cory's, hard to tell which on the middle pic, look closely there's a hint of moulted coverts on the upperwing which is more suggestive of Scopoli's and the bottom pic is by far the most definitive, both the white fingers and the moult are easy to see.

A big raft of mixed sheawaters and some attendent Gannets had us looking for cetaceans without success but a tiny Barolo's Shearwater did leave the flock as we approached. 

Hardly any dolphins were seen just a handful of Bottlenose Dolphins and an unidentified singleton. A brief view of a Shark's fin wasn't long enough to enable an identification.

Best of the rest were a couple of Pomarine Skuas.

Once again we'd be sailing through the best Orca spot at night - dohhhh.

Next stop North Carolina. No wait...CAPTAIN turn starboard for Lisbon, Portugal...a country tick for us.

Once again we were off the ship as soon after breakfast as possible and took an interesting and bumpy (cobbles & potholes) taxi ride up to the top of Edward VIIth Park with the intention of a mooch about then back down the hill via the Botanic Gardens. Once dropped off JC saw there was a bit of scrubland opposite the park entrance to explore and we were soon 'pishing' the line of trees for whatever might appear, there were warbler and tit calls eminating from the foliage. A couple of Coal Tits and a Blue Tit made themselves visible and then something flew out of one of the trees and landed in a pathside bush.  After some serious pishing by JC it left the depths of the bush and showed briefly in awful light. A Firecrest is always a good addition to the SD card.

A weird sound, sort of a wailing and low humming dragged us further into the scrub where a Sardinian Warbler shot across the path in front of us. That wasn't what was making the noise, what was was most unexpected!

Visit Lisbon - See a Scotsman making a racket while dressed in full regalia in the middle of nowhere - weird or what??? Later in the day we learned that Portugal were playing Scotland in the UEFA Nations League that evening. Mystery solved! 

The scrubby area gave way to a bit of grassland overlooking a restaurant with a water feature with a moat. The water feature was dry, it looked like it had fountains playing when the cafe was open but moat was full of water and held an Iberian Pond Turtle. A crow flew over our heads, we expected it be a Hooded Crow not realising that they don't get anywhere near this far west on mainland Europe even though they are the default crow in Ireland. Bog standard Carrion Crow it is then.

With thoughts of crossing the road into the main part of the park we ambled that way until we were waylaid by a pair of Hoopoes casually probing the short turf not far from the path. With all the stealth the four of us could muster we used every bush and shrub to get as close as possible.

After a couple of hundred shots we realised we could creep round the other side of some bushes where the light would be better, now we would be more exposed but ignoring the B*stard European Ankle Flies and innumerable ants we lay prone on the grass using toes and elboes to inch ever closer.

The Hoopoes didn't seem to notice us and kept going about their beaky business which was good.

Only once did either of them raise their incredible crest and we missed it! Still we inched closer and the shots kept coming...and then a young lass steps up close by standing tall and bold phone in hand and began taking her own pics - did the Hoopoes fly off, did they eck - don't think they noticed her. Meanwhile we just kept that shutter button pressed firmly down.

In the end it all got too much for aging limbs or our SD cards were full and we had to get up. Once upright we took a snap of the nearest Hoopoe with our phone too. The camera on our phone is poor and we used the 2x zoom option and some cropping but you get the idea. It was no more than six feet away.

JC was still photographing them so we had a go at getting a shot of that but couldn't get him and the bird cos just at the wrong moment a family with a dog came by and the Hoopoe flew off, probably much more aware and afraid of the dog than they are humans.

Once in the park proper we first heard then saw Ring Necked Parakeets.

We're not overly happy they seem to be in every public park in Iberia, and our own Stanley Park back home, but they can make for exotic photo opportunities.

Also present were the seemingly ubiquitous Monk Parakeets and a new one for us Blue Crowned Parakeet which we didn't get a shot of. 

By now we needed a brew but the cafe in the park wasn't open yet, we'd have to wait. In the trees adjacent to the cafe there was some flitting going on which on further investigation was a Pied Flycatcher busily catching flies and trying to defend its lucrative patch from a family of Black Redstarts.

At the same time what looked like another family of Black Redstarts were persitently arguing amongst themselves a few yards away. It took ages to get this shot of the male. They were zipping around here there and everywhere and only ever seemed to land in the shadiest of spots.

Looking down on all this frantic activity were some sedate Serins.

A wander round this wooded area of the park gave us a Spotted Flycatcher, a really annoying Short Toed Treecreeper that really didn't want its photo taken, we followed it from tree to tree for ages, a load of Blackbirds and a few more Serins. The park has a beautiful and impressive old building in it the Pavillion of Carlos Lopes which again was closed. Of more interest than the architecture or contents was the number of Spotless Starlings on the roof but yet again totally impossible to get a pic of. They aren't particularly shy or skittish, they just do their own thing which seems to be always somewhere where you can't get a lens on them.

Once we'd exhausted the possibilities of the park we aimed for the Botanic Gardens via a welcome glug of Cafe Corto, a big freshly squeezed orange juice and a tasty cheese n ham butty. We'd lost JC somewhere in the park, he'd become the man that walks alone!, and while we were scoffing he'd already made his way to the Botanic Gardens. We arranged to meet him there but a wrong turn leaving the cafe took us back to the main high street through Lisbon with its market and bars, the bars being full to the brim of Scottish footy fans downing beer as if it were going out of fashion - well it was quite a warm day and a cold one was very tempting. News from JC was that the gardens were quite he'd had little more than a Blackcap so BT decided to have a look at the castle where there might be some raptors soaring over the ramparts at the top of the hill while AB and us hit the trail back to the ship.

We're not a great fan of cities in general but what we saw of Cadiz was impressive, Lisbon was even better with a great feel to the place, maybe that was down to the footy fans but it did seem to have a good vibe going on. There is some lovely architecture along the waterfront.

The third side from where we are stood was full of hip little bars and restaurants, bet the place is heaving come the evening.

All good things come to an end and so we left Lisbon mid afternoon for a sail down the river under the massive suspention bridge and past the statue of Christ the Redeemer, which is a more recent take on the famous one in Brazil which itself was a Portuguese colony and the Torre de Belem. No we didn't get pics of either...always forget to do the culture stuff. The plinths the bridge supports stand are were the nearest to sighting Orcas we got.

Luckily for the occupants of the sailing yacht the Orca seems more intent on ambushing the dolphins than nibblng away at their rudder. We think they've been able to sneak past unnoticed. Once out in the open sea we started seeing shearwaters quiet soon, including several Balearic Shearwaters.

There were good numbers of Cory's Shearwaters

but very few Scopoli's Shearwaters out this way.

Of most interest was the leading bird in this one - far more experienced seabird afficionadoes than us suggested it might be/likely is a 'Menorcan' Shearwater, a hybrid between Balearic and Yelkouan Shearwaters. To be honest we'd never heard of such a creature.

Whatever it is it was very different to the Balearics we were seeing and has some similarities to Yelkouan Shearwaters. Several Gannets were about, one flew past the ship carrying a fish, don't think we've ever seen that before they usually swallow them immediately after capture. It's not taking it back to a nest for youngsters cos it is still a young bird too young to breed and they don't nest this far south.

Looking closely at the pic the fish could be a Flying Fish or more ominously it could have been trapped in a bit of net and the bird has picked it up and now is tangled and can't swallow it - doomed to carry its dinner until it starves - what a sad thought/scenario. On a happier note the sail out of Lisbon did give us several pods of Common Dolphins and a pod of Bottlenose Dolphins which were fairly close to the ship.

 

Where to next? Overnight we sailed along the drop off - grrrr they've done it to us again - on the way to Leixeos, the port for Porto our next, and final stop.

 

In the meantime let us know who's the least camera shy in your outback.