seabirds

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today and both were cracking. As we head towards August, the harbour porpoises start feeding in the bay in enormous numbers, and this morning they were here a week or so early. Often the general public aren’t as impressed by the idea of seeing porpoises in the same way…

Another great variety of wildlife spotted today with grey seals, loads of common dolphins, several groups of harbour porpoises and some Risso’s dolphins on the morning four hour trip. Seabirds again included lots of storm petrels and diving gannets. This afternoon’s three hour trip was really chilled – we watched some common dolphins feeding with…

I was unsure all week about whether Friday trips would be possible based on the wind forecast. We were able to head out on an early Ocean Discovery this morning in the end and we’re glad we did, because there was an amazing feeding frenzy going on in the bay. Hungry  dolphins raced around herding…

The weather forecast decided yesterday it would be misty and drizzly today. I hoped it was lying but it wasn’t. However it was one of those summer days when a southwesterly wind and poor  visibility brings in a lot of seabirds close to the coast. Most of them were Manx shearwaters and gannets, and one…

We saw several grey seals hauled out on the rocks during the morning Ocean Discovery trip, including males, females and juveniles. Sailing westwards, we picked up a few shearwaters, gannets and guillemots but on the whole it was quieter offshore so we decided to go a different direction on the afternoon tour. The brisk north…

Happy  solstice. It started off murky and damp with a few rolls of thunder first thing so it was a good thing we had a later start than normal for this morning’s trip. The sun broke through and we started the trip by finding come common dolphins in the morning calm. We also saw a…

After the easterly wind of yesterday, it was rather quieter out there for fins today. We saw some amazing seabird feeding on both morning and afternoon trips though, with gannets, Manx shearwaters, kittiwakes and other gulls, and guillemots all feasting on small baitfish. It was surprising not to see any dolphins or porpoises with all…

We had two Ocean Discovery trips today and had great sightings on both. This morning we found a small group of common dolphins who stayed with us a while, lots of feeding seabirds and an ocean sunfish. We also saw a herring gull divebombing a heron, which we haven’t witnessed before. This afternoon we watched…

This morning’s trip was originally supposed to be a four hour tour, but as forecast, there was a lot of south west wind overnight, which created some big chunky swell. So we kept it to three hours and didn’t go too far west, but even so, the surf was an impressive sight. We found some…

On today’s boat tour, we had a surprise on leaving the harbour this afternoon when a very small minke whale popped up just in front of us, then behind us then was gone! People are often concerned when they see little whales on their own, but minkes wean and are independent when they are quite…