If I called someone a gannet it would be a derogatory comment reflecting their intake or food. However, just look at this individual that afforded some excellent views on our East Coast Seabird Tour last week. So beautiful. The tour for next year is on the website and open for bookings here. It’s a wildlife photographers dream.
Our 17 days in California had been carefully timed to get the best from our trip. Some species would be leaving, others arriving, some breeding some already feeding young. It was inevitable given nature does not operate to a precise timetable that we would struggle to see or even miss some species. So it was only on our fourth and final journey out into the Pacific did the shout go up for ‘ALBATROSS!’ something I’d hoped to see but didn’t expect.
A pitching boat and a troughed sea with a three metre swell will never be conducive to getting a good look at something. One hand on the rail at all times in an attempt to stay on board with another for binoculars and camera and you find yourself rapidly running out of limbs. Just as I managed to get my bins onto the damn thing it disappeared. Oh well … I’d seen it. My first Black footed Albatross.
It was a few moments later I realised why I’d lost it. The Albatross had pitched down on the surface of the sea. We made a bee-line for it; and what was that with it? Oh my god it was another two.
Fantastic birds. These individuals will perhaps be nesting on Hawaii and travelling the two and a half thousand miles east to the coast off California to feed. An epic day!
A trip into the North Sea this weekend paid dividends. More about the sightings later however one species we saw in abundance were Gannets. We were surrounded by them. Not only dashing white adults but lots and lots of darker juveniles; first year birds, giving an indication of a good breeding year on the Yorkshire coast and beyond. As the birds first hung in the wind and then plummeted into the sea targeting a Herring Shoal the sea became peppered with the plumes of their splashes.
Letter From Norfolk 