An early morning rise with a departure from dwelling at 0530 hours is how final Sunday began. Our intention 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 at all times stuffed with uncertainty. I’ve had great journeys however others, on the similar time of 12 months, which had been actually poor. At the moment 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, in fact, is like searching for the proverbial needle. The open ocean resembles a desert during which sand has been changed by water. You possibly can 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 wonderful sense of odor and they’re able to detect meals from many miles away. Others, resembling gulls and skuas, merely be careful for giant gatherings of seabirds within the horizon. We had been crusing for the higher a part of an hour with not a chicken in sight once we began seeing just a few shearwaters flying low over the horizon. As we obtained 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 choose up. It gave us a chance 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, principally the previous.
However we additionally picked up Sooty Shearwater (Ardenna grisea), Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus), Balearic Shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus) and the attractive 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 widespread at the moment of 12 months, had been lacking altogether. Now we have seen the influence of avian flu on some seabirds that had been as soon as common and ample 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 direction of the coastal shelf. As soon as six miles out, we began seeing Wilson’s (Oceanites oceanicus) and European Storm Petrels (Hydrobates pelagicus), just a few providing fleeting glimpses as they skimmed low and quick on the horizon. A few miles additional and we had been seeing storm petrels extra steadily than as much as that time. We determined it was time to decelerate and put some chum on the water. Ideally, this may 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 come back. Increasingly storm petrels saved 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 chicken’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 digital camera. 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 rely of the numbers seen to us and we misplaced rely 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.
