Weather : Cloudy and mild with strong SW breeze, occasional light showers

I awoke at around 3am after a restless night, had a light breakfast at the B & B in Penzance and left my family sleeping. I walked down through still dark streets and arrived on the quayside at 4:15am along with about 400 other birders. Today was the day of the Scillonian pelagic. There were many familiar faces on board including Rob and Jackie Phillips and Paul and Sherri Taylor from back home, big listers like Lee Evans, Steve Gantlett, Mark Marshall and Richard Bonser, two friends made last year - Viv Stratton, our guide for the day, and Cornish boat-builder Steve Elton.

We set sail on time at 5am and having gained a seat, after exchanging a few pleasantries with my immediate neighbours, I huddled into my fleece and tried to sleep. This was difficult though because as soon as we left the harbour the ship started to pitch and roll and it was very uncomfortable for everyone. Many birders were very ill. I consider myself to be a good sailor having never been seasick but this constant lurching made me feel queasy. I soon gave up and started to look for birds, the first being a Gannet which appeared out of the gloom, the first of about a hundred that I saw on the voyage.

Soon after we started to see Storm Petrels in odd ones and twos. I recorded sixty of these amazing little birds dancing across the waves during the day. The first target species of the trip came at half past six, a Cory’s Shearwater, flying parallel to the ship but fairly distant and hard to see over the heads of the early scrum of birders. This was a British tick for me although I had seen them before in Mallorca. Just twenty minutes later another flew alongside the ship in close and everybody had great views. I saw fourteen in all throughout the day, each one seemingly getting closer and closer to the ship, until you could see every feather detail and eye and bill colour.

Five minutes before we had our first Great Shearwater of the day, skimming past but never close, and at half past seven, six were together around a trawler. I thought last year was pretty amazing with around fifteen of these special birds, my first at that time, but today was out of this world. At one point we had forty Great Shearwaters around the ship, some so close you could almost touch them. I personally counted eighty during the voyage and the ‘official’ count was much higher. Manx Shearwaters however were positively rare with only a dozen seen. The only Sooty Shearwater of the day was spotted at 6:55am.

Great Skuas were seen in ones and twos throughout the day and once when the crew were chumming a party of six appeared and harassed the petrels and gulls. Fulmars were also ever present and I counted at least 25 although there were probably more. The only other skuas seen were two dark phase Arctic Skuas.

Sabine’s Gulls were another highlight of the trip but were generally only seen during chumming sessions. In all I saw five summer-plumaged adults and two sub-adults. We only saw four Kittiwakes all day, two adults and two juveniles, and the opportunity to compare them with Sabine’s Gulls was welcome. However it was apparent that when you saw a ‘real’ Sabine’s there was no question of mistaking it with juvenile Kittiwake.

The bird that a lot of people had come to see was the Wilson’s Petrel and they were not disappointed as we saw at least three at two different chumming locations. They were not really that difficult to pick out once you knew what you were looking for. They were slightly larger than the European Storm Petrels that they accompanied, and lacked the white underwing bar of the commoner bird but had a pale brown upperwing bar. Their flight was more direct and less fluttery, and when seen well you could see their feet protruding beyond their tails.

There were not as many cetaceans seen as there was last year but the highlight for me was three Long-Finned Pilot Whales breaching. I also saw a White-beaked Dolphin. Both species were mammal life ticks for me.

The major highpoint, or disaster, was depending where you were on the ship at around 8pm. I was at the back of the ship with Rob and Jackie when a call came from the far stern “Albatross.” We scanned back behind the ship and amazingly sat amongst Gannets a long way back was a huge bird bobbing on the waves. It was sure enough an albatross. Birders at the stern had seen it well enough to identify it as a Black-browed Albatross, a sub-adult. Some even got scopes onto it. To be honest our views were not great but we did see it, a huge white bird with black back and wings and a large bill that could hardly be anything else. In our efforts to attract everybody’s attention I probably didn’t watch it for as long as I would have liked. Others said it had flown but I did not see it in flight. Birders were streaming from all over the ship but by the time the bridge got the message and turned the ship it could not be refound. Many birders got very upset, understandably, but this had occurred just an hour from port when everybody was winding down, having drinks, meals or sleeping and many birders thought that someone was ‘having a laugh’. Paul, in his socks, and Sherry just made it on deck in time. Unfortunately what had been a brilliant trip had ended in upset and acrimony for most birders as only about fifty of us saw it.