Once again, I stayed up too late last night (when I ought to have gone to bed) to review photos from Saturday's pelagic trip. I managed to turn out a couple that weren't too bad. I have already mentioned the species we've seen, so here are just a few photos...
As is often the case, there were plenty of Wilson's Storm Petrels around. (As well as several Leach's, but I didn't get any photos of them.)
Also common in these waters are Greater Shearwaters:
The Cory's Shearwaters were also pretty common today, but seemed a little more skittish, flying away from the boat much sooner than the greaters...
As I mentioned before, in addition to the birds we get some spectacular sea life as well. We came across a few groups of Pilot Whales that were very accomodating...
One of my non-avian favorites from these trips are the ocean sunfish - Mola Mola. I usually stayed on the lower deck on this trip and I didn't get any great photos of them (since they are often laying flat to the surface of the water) but I like the fact that, even at this angle, you can make out the eye and a bit of the mouth on this one...
But as I mentioned in my previous post, the stars of the day were the Saddleback Dolphins. We encountered at least one group, and possible more (don't know if we came across the same group a few times), each time numbering in the several hundreds.
And my best photo of the day...
I've posted more photos of both the birds and mammals at: http://www.pbase.com/bluegoose/june2008
