Thursday 23 May 2024 - Spring Blitz Day 2

Well, it was a different day out there today and the hundreds of shearwaters we found yesterday were not out there today. We did find a few on the shelf in addition to a distant Pomarine Jaeger, but overall numbers were lower for everything except for Black-capped Petrels and Band-rumped Storm-Petrels. There was a distant dark morph Trindade Petrel that we did our best to get everyone on...but it was far and uncooperative. We did have a nice flyby first year Arctic Tern offshore and had some incredible encounters with some Gervais' Beaked Whales (Mesoplodon europaeus) that were super cooperative! A few images are included below.

Our trip list and report can be found here:

https://ebird.org/tripreport/243897

All photos Kate Sutherland 

Our first encounter was with some Blainville’s Beaked Whales. Just had a chance to take a good (not exhausted) look this morning!!

You can see the teeth on this male, not the best image but a good record shot!

Gervais’ Beaked Whales

These whales have dark scars instead of white when they heal which is a diagnostic feature

Here you can see the melon and a bit of the "beak" on this likely female individual

Gorgeous "tiger stripe" pattern that is typical of females and possibly younger individuals, but really young males are hard to tell from females - we just don't know enough about them.

This individual has some really interesting pigmentation. Most in the last group we saw did as well.

 We also saw more flyingfishes today!

And finally one of the Atlantic Cory's we saw checking out our tropicbird teaser! We pull these behind the boat to hopefully attract something like a tropicbird, though other birds find them attractive too!