Pelagic!

A somewhat unusual blog post today, as it is coming to you from the Northern Territory!

I'll be posting a LOT about that later though, so this post is about my first pelagic, which was on Sunday of Wollongong :D sadly I can't make it a very long post as I am short of time and wifi here. Apologies in advance for the lack of pictures, I'll edit them in later, I don't have my hard drive with me.

I left Canberra on Saturday evening, and took the bus to Wollongong. I was staying with a friend, who had very nicely offered to put me up and also get up stupidly early to drop me at the boat!

We arrived at the boat at 6.45am, and we were setting off by seven. Australian Pelican, Little Black Cormorant and Darter were seen before even leaving the harbour.

As we proceeded out to sea, a few Silver Gulls were following us. Very quickly, the first Albatross appeared, giving us short but nice views.

Throughout the day, we were followed by Shy and Black Browed Albatross. We had brief views a couple of times on the trip out of Fluttering and Hutton's Shearwaters, which someone called out were accompianied by a Common Diving Petrel, which I succeeded to miss, along with the one shout of Fairy Penguin. There were several Wedge Tailed Shearwaters following the boat, which Duade Paton and I spent a lot of time attempting to get decent shots of (mostly without success, annoyingly! Although I'm sure Duade has some excellent ones, he always seems to). A Fairy Prion barrelled past, and I just got a glimpse.

A White Fronted Tern put in a brief appearance, not long enough for me to get photos sadly.

Once we got out to the shelf, we were all so preoccupied with the appearance of a Northern Giant Petrel that it took several minutes for anyone to notice that there was an Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross sitting right next to the boat!

A few moments of excitement when someone called out a Northern Royal Albatross. I can't remember who it was, but someone told me they hadn't seen one out on the Wollongong Pelagics for several years. It stayed. Long way off and didnt come in towards the boat, but I managed an ID shot to annoy Ashwin and Simon with! :D

After a while, we started heading back. It had been a very calm day, and we hadn't picked up any petrels or new shearwaters a the shelf. On the way back, we were joined by a couple of Gibson's Wandering  Albatross, one of which was banded on the boat (very cool!!), and a short while later, an adult male Exulans Wandering Albatross came up. They caught him, and I got to band him!!

The only other birds of interest we saw were a juvenile and later an adult Australian Gannet, a single Brown Skua, and a pair of Kelp Gulls as we got into the harbour.

It was a fantastic trip, and I've booked in for another one from Eden on the 21st of September, which I'm really looking forward to!

Now that that report's over. I'm currently sitting in Darwin Airport, waiting for a friend from Melbourne, Derek Burton. We're setting off on a three-week trip from here in Darwin to Wyndham in WA! His flight gets in at 5pm, so I've had just enought time to write this post. From here on, I'll be writing most of my posts in advance and posting them whenever I have Internet! Until then~

Julian