A stomach for it

Some people love them, some hate them. Without doubt a pelagic trip is the best way to see seabirds. There’s the rub … you need the stomach for it.

Earlier this month out of Tobormory in Mull we were lucky enough to have relatively calm seas and saw Storm Petrels, Manx Shearwaters and Great Skuas – one of which had been colour ringed in either Shetland or Handa Island to the north. At the time I took the series of shots of this Bonxie robbing a Kittiwake of a Sand Eel I never saw the ring. I almost discarded the one photo showing the ring as it was slightly out of focus but all the other shots in the series did not show the bird to be wearing a ring at all.