Natural Selection

Well that one is. The ones that follow aren’t. After the spin class at 8am and breakfast in the restaurant, both overlooking the sea, there was no sign of yesterday’s Peregrines. Or indeed come to that any birds at all. I was beginning to regret joking to Jane that we were guaranteed a bird on…

Well done to Jane on finding the bird of the day, a petrel of one flavour or another. If that sounds a bit vague to be bird of the day, then I’ve not been clear and it was the only bird of the day. We did have a couple of encounters with whales. The first…

I didn’t blog yesterday as I only saw three birds – a brief shearwater and a couple of Leach’s Petrels. There’s only so much you can say about that really. You have your pre-conceived ideas of large sea birds arcing over the deep ocean, and eventually you dig out two birds barely bigger than sparrows…

I wasn’t sure whether there would be enough to say about an excursion to the nearest beach to the port, but I think there was so I hope you agree. After Jane had sorted a pair of loungers and a parasol at the artificially golden sands of Las Teresitas I wandered in to the nearby…

Today we were on the first of our Canary Island stops in Lanzarote, before making a sedate journey overnight to Tenerife. We hadn’t booked any excursions. I couldn’t find a bird guide either as the main one has apparently given up. That said I’ve been to the island four times before (day tripping on a…

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…

Like the last time we had a cruise stop in Lisbon I arranged to be guided by Birds and Nature Tours. They were great so I chose to use them again. On this occasion I was shown round by Amelia Almeida. You can find plenty of information online about the birds of the Lisbon area,…

The last cruise we did we stopped in Vigo. We went to Baiona where there is a replica of the Columbus boat the Pinta, and had a lovely late summer afternoon exploring a castle. I mention this because we were supposed to be going there again today but it was cancelled due to lack of…

Today began not far into the journey south along the edge of the Bay of Biscay. Even though we weren’t in the bay proper things felt a bit quiet birdwise at breakfast, with the odd Gannet but nothing else. I had a spin class booked and was a bit concerned what I might be missing…

We had a leisurely morning as the hotel checkout was midday and we weren’t due on the boat until 2.30. Our digs (the Moxy) were a little eclectic but we had a great stay. One of the unusual elements was the ‘feature wall’ below, it was authentic with the light flashing on and off regularly.…