Survey Route: CEFAS Peltic survey

Monday 5 October It was still a little dark as we made our way to the bridge but there was enough light to see that there were quite a few small land birds fluttering around outside the. For a birder it’s always a little exciting to see this as there’s a chance there’ll be something…

Saturday 3 October Yes, it’s October so that means it’s Peltic time again – certainly doesn’t seem like a year since I was last on board the CEFAS Endeavour. The MARINElife team onboard this year is Robin Langdon and me – Peter Howlett. I boarded the Endeavour in Falmouth on the 2nd; Robin travelled down…

Sadly, we didn’t go out with a bang, no fantastic late sighting but there was a steady trickle of birds. The best of these was a lovely juvenile Arctic Skua

Highlight of the afternoon was finally adding Bottlenose Dolphin to the cetacean list for this year

Some Common Dolphin put on a good show with plenty of leaping close to the Endeavour, some of the results are shown here.

We did quite well for Common Dolphin too, six encounters totalling 76 animals, including one pod of around 60 animals that made a very energetic approach to the Endeavour.

As soon as I saw it I realised it was a Fea’s-type Petrel, a real rarity in UK waters, and normally a resident of either the Desertas Islands in the case of Desertas Petrel, or Cape Verde if a Fea’s Petrel.

As we were hauling today’s star bird did a few circuits of the Endeavour – a beautiful Short-eared Owl. It had started raining, so it was obviously quite keen to find somewhere to land but there was too much activity on board, so after a couple of circuits it disappeared

Minutes after coming off transect we came up to a feeding frenzy made up almost totally of Great Shearwater – about 5000 of them.

As we approached there were not only Gannet but also a large number of Great Shearwater and a few Cory’s Shearwater. This completed our full set of shearwaters for the day. Also, in the melee another Balearic Shearwater was spotted.