seabirds

We had a really long day in unbroken sunshine today with a four hour trip, followed by 2 two hour trips. This morning there were small groups of common dolphins everywhere we went. Mostly they were small pods of 4-6 animals, but a few had more like 20 dolphins in them, including a nursery pod…

The weather forecast  for the rest of today and overnight is looking absolutely terrible, however we were able to sneak out this morning for a Bay Discovery trip before the wind got up and the rain started. We’re really glad we managed it, because we saw lots of common dolphins inshore, some grey seals round…

Unfortunately we had to cancel yesterday’s trips – we returned to Penzance after an hour in the morning due to more exceptionally dense fog. Very frustrating! However today the fog cleared , and we had a four hour then a three hour trip. This morning there were common dolphins everywhere – they stayed with us…

We had the weirdest day of weather today, with more thick murk at the start. This lifted enough for the trip to run in the morning and we had a great time with a local group of youngsters and their families. Lots of them were on a boat for the first time and we found…

More delightful summer weather today, with mizzle and murk and by the afternoon a  fairly brisk westerly wind. The wildlife made up for it. This morning we had a four hour trip, and we had great views of common dolphins and a really good variety of seabirds, including storm petrels, sandwich terns, Manx, spooty and…

We had excellent views today of a minke whale feeding in the bay with common dolphins all day. The minke’s blow was very visible from a fair distance away which caused some initial discussion about the species ID but it was a minke. The bay was full of dolphins in small groups here there and…

After the extremely strong wind of yesterday the weather and sea had calmed down an amazing extent. We had two three hour trips, and had great views of common dolphins on both of them. This morning we found two small groups, and this afternoon quite a few more. There was a large group of seals…

We had a typical August day today with a brisk northerly wind , good sailing conditions and plentiful wildlife. The local haul out site suddenly has a lot more seals there than there have been so far this summer, with adult males and females, and little juveniles too. All the seabird chicks which hatched on…

We had a very busy day today with three trips in strong northerly wind. This pushed a lot of those pelagic seabirds which have been feeding in the bay lately further offshore, where we couldn’t go! There were still thousands of Manx shearwaters inshore though, and also some storm petrels and fulmars. We saw common…

August’s weather started as most of July has gone, with wind, rain and a bit of a sea running. However the wildlife sightings continued to be brilliant. It does seem to be the case that when we get loads of low pressure systems queuing up, it sends it some amazing wildlife. This morning for example,…