Overall a rather pleasant disaster with no sought after rare gadfly petrels. The crew for this trip dropped out so it was just me and Rolando (the skipper) and the weather was just about as bad as it gets here in the spring so we only managed a few hours at sea before fear or sea sickness took me down. The blue planet this was not: http://peteralfrey.blogspot.com/2010/05/graciosa-pelagic-may-2010.html
The Azores are a superb pelagic destination and more trips will certainly reveal more surprises. In the last four years my highlights have included dark-morph Trindade Petrel, 2 Fea's Petrels and some of the largest groups of Wilson's Petrel in the WP. In addition there is the fantastic suite of local breeding seabirds; the endemic Monteiro's Petrel, Grant's Petrel, Barolo's Shearwater, Bulwers Petrels, Roseate Terns, Cory's Shearwaters and Azorean Gull. Regular seabird migrants include Long-tailed, Arctic, Pomarine and Great Skuas, Sooty, Great and Manx Shearwater with rarer Grey Phalarope, White-faced Storm Petrel and Sabine's Gull. Vagrants in the past few years include 6 Trindade Petrels http://www.birdingazores.com/photoref.php?s_id=191&b_id=10366&stat=1 (a recent one) , 2 Black-capped Petrel, Bermuda Petrel, Black-browed Albatross, Masked and Brown Booby, White-tailed and Red-billed Tropicbird.
Here are some posts from our last autumn pelagic:
8 comments:
Great photos Peter, So when is the best time to go for the maximum no. of species?
Amazing! I've just looked in the mirror and my face is bright green! Very interesting posts and I hope you score a biggie!
Thanks John,
It is good for seabirds mainly through spring to autumn but in August Grant's and Monteiro's Petrel occur together.
I hope I score a biggy too but thats all for now. I only had three days. Still after a regular time, location for Trindade or Black-capped Petrel so will give it another go soon.
You did very well with the pics, Peter (especially of Barolo's Shearwater too) - will pick your brains on this trip some time.
Cheers Dominic,
I reckon August would be better. The Grants would be coming in and the Monteiro's fledging- could be a lot of at-sea petrel action. Could be worth getting a crew together?
I hope I did not make part off the dropping out crew you mencioned.For us Azoreans traveling to Graciosa can be as hard to travel from London.You had a bitt bad luck whith the sea.Imagen that we had a sea like a lake during weeks and everything changed when you arrived.I hope next time I can make it.And do not forget to make a try on my seakayacks.See you soon.
Cheers Gerby,
seems like I got unlucky with the weather- it was actually worse than some autumn visits. Just means I am going to have go back so hope you can join me next time. Could get some interesting photo angles from a seakayack I reckon:-))
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