Natural Selection

I’ll get to the entirely unoriginal and far from topical headline later. First the picture of the Lesser Black-backed Gull was taken by Jane in Lisbon whilst sightseeing, she’s well trained. It turned out to have been ringed in France, proving once more that you can’t assume these are always local birds that haven’t moved very far.

Sightings map and dates for orange 3:GAN

Today was a sea day. I’ve decided to go to spin class at 9, sea watch for three hours, take a couple of hours off then do a couple more on sea days.

It wasn’t very auspicious that breakfast and spinning overlooking the sea hadn’t produced a single bird. Sure enough that was replicated over three hours viewing from the cabin balcony before lunch.

I had another go later as planned as you don’t see anything if you don’t look. Eventually I picked up a bird, and a quality one at that as a White-faced Storm Petrel danced over the waves as only they can. I went for my camera but then couldn’t find it again, so here is an image of one from Wikipedia Commons by JJ Harrison used with permission under licence.

These birds nest on remote islets so to see one from a cruise ship was a real thrill. After that I saw another five petrels of one kind of another. Three were Leach’s Petrels; the other two I couldn’t be sure of but after the first ‘four star’ petrel of the day it really didn’t matter.