Hooray! I received two batches of photos last night, so we can keep going until Thursday, at least.

Today’s photos are from David Riddell; his captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.  These photos were taken last weekend.

Went out last Saturday on a seabird-watching “pelagic” trip off the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.  The weather was looking marginal, but we’d postponed twice and really wanted to get out there, so set out at dawn from the small seaside town of Whangamata, heading for the deep water where the open ocean specialists live.  In the end we saw 19 “tubenose” species (Procellariiformes: the albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters and their relatives), plus little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor).

After about three hours the slow, old fishing boat we’d chartered arrived off the edge of the Continental Shelf, beyond Mayor Island. This is an extinct volcano, known for its cliffs of solid, glossy black obsidian, once traded throughout the country by Maori, who made cutting tools out of it.  The mainland behind has almost entirely disappeared in the murk along the horizon

Chopped-up fish bits thrown off the back of the boat soon had a mixed flock of birds gathering to enjoy the feast. Most were flesh-footed shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes), but other species were among them.  There’s a black petrel (Procellaria parkinsoni) right of centre in the picture below, with the bone-coloured bill:

Flesh-footed shearwaters of course have pinkish legs and feet, as well as slightly pinkish, dark-tipped bills. They breed widely on islands off north-eastern New Zealand, as well as off Australia and in the Indian Ocean, though numbers globally are declining:

Black petrels on the other hand have dark feet, and are slightly bigger and blacker. They used to breed widely on the New Zealand mainland but are now confined to two islands north-east of Auckland.  Population estimates range between 20,000 and 38,000.  Their Maori name is taiko, which some may remember from some previous photos of mine posted here. It is also the name of a much rarer bird in the Chatham Islands:

Squabbles over the fish bits grew quite intense! This is a black petrel being pursued by a flesh-footed shearwater:

It was a good day to test identification skills on the dark seabirds. This one is a grey-faced petrel (Pterodroma gouldi), which breed on islands around northern New Zealand, as well as a few mainland sites:

Another dark species, and possibly the bird of the day, was this short-tailed shearwater (Ardenna tenuirostris). They may be the world’s most abundant seabird, with an estimated population of 23 million birds, breeding on islands around southern Australia, though few make it across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand.  It’s like a smaller, daintier version of the sooty shearwater (Ardenna grisea) which is almost as abundant, breeding in huge numbers around southern New Zealand, as well as off Australia, Chile and the Falklands.  One of those was seen on Saturday as well, though I missed it myself:

After a while the big guns arrived, drawn in by the smell of the fish. Four albatross species were seen, with white-capped mollymawks (Thalassarche cauta) the most numerous:

There were also several Antipodean albatrosses (Diomedea antipodensis), the local form of wandering albatross (D. exulans), from which it was recently split.  This one is a Gibson’s albatross (D. a. gibsoni); one of the nominate subspecies also turned up:

Hanging out at the back of the feeding frenzy were a few New Zealand storm petrels (Fregetta maoriana). They were two small and distant to get decent photos with my ancient camera, but I thought I’d throw this in just to show they were there.  As I posted here previously, these were believed to be extinct until rediscovered in 2003, more than a century after the previous confirmed sighting.  Since the clearing of rats and cats from their breeding ground on Little Barrier Island their numbers have boomed – until recently they were mainly seen north of Auckland, but we saw five, further south in the Bay of Plenty:

Closer inshore was a different suite of birds, and it was a delight to see several little shearwaters (Puffinus assimilis) fly past. These are normally scattered in ones and twos, and don’t hang around boats like some of the other petrels and shearwaters:

Today’s photos come from Neil Dawe, who sent them with a note: “My wife and I spent three weeks in the UK travelling over 1500 miles this past spring/summer spending most of our time in smaller villages and towns but we did manage to visit a few areas specifically for wildlife, and the Bempton Cliffs was one of those.”  Neil’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. 

Reader’s Wildlife Photos by Neil K Dawe, Vancouver Island, BC

Bempton Cliffs

This past May my wife and I had the opportunity to visit the Bempton Cliffs in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, an important part of the Flamborough and Filey Coast Special Protected Area (SPA). It is a spectacular site—a true wonder of the avian world—known especially for its over 300,000 seabirds that arrive there to nest each spring.

I had visited these chalk cliffs some 50 years ago and recall few other people there and my ability to, perhaps foolishly, crawl to the cliff edge for photographs. On our recent visit, we were two of an estimated 5,000 visitors walking the clifftop paths and viewing birds from the safe, now well-fenced viewpoints dotted along the cliff edge.

The Bempton Cliffs run about 10 km (6 miles) from Flamborough Head north and, in spots, are over 100 m (330 feet) high. In this first photo (a), the sea arch and cliffs at Staple Newk are visible. The following photo (b) shows the extent of the cliffs looking to the south from about one-third of the way along the cliff trail from the north end (note the group of people at one of the observation points):

The sea arch cliffs support most of the nesting Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) at Bempton. This is the only mainland breeding colony of gannets in England with over 15,000 occupied sites in the SPA. During my first visit, I recall watching with awe as these huge birds would plunge-dive into the North Sea from heights of over 40 m (130 ft) feeding on surface-schooling fish and squid, such as mackerel and short-finned squid (Illex illecebrosus). We saw none of that feeding behaviour this year and apparently it’s now quite a rare sight to see them foraging near the cliffs. The likely depletion of local fish stocks due to climate change and over-fishing means the gannet has to forage further away to find the shoals of fish they need:

With a wingspan of over 170 cm (67 in), the gannet is the largest seabird nesting at Bempton Cliffs.

A gannet pair with one adult tending the nest while the other takes some rest time:

A gannet arrives with nesting material to add to the nest while its mate incubates the one egg:

The Black-legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla), a small pelagic gull with a wingspan just under a meter, has over 44,000 pairs nesting along the cliff ledges of the SPA. This is also the most abundant gull globally, although its numbers have declined by about 40% since the 1970s:

Black-legged Kittiwakes at the nest. Kittiwakes normally lay 1–2 eggs and both the male and female incubate. The bird on the far right had 2 eggs in the nest; one egg can just be seen in the photo:

The Guillemot (Uria aalge), known in North America as Common Murre, is the most abundant nester in the SPA with around 112,000 individuals followed by the Razorbill (Alca torda) at over 45,000 breeding individuals. Here both species are at their cliff edge nest sites, the lighter, blackish-brown plumage Guillemots and the Razorbills with the black plumage:

Guillemot pair on gently-sloping, vegetated ground. Most Guillemot nest sites are on cliff ledges and less commonly on soil or other substrates. One egg is laid and the pair share incubation duties equally:

Razorbill on a cliff edge:

Razorbill pair on their cliff ledge nest site. One egg is normally laid and, like the Guillemot, both the female and male share the incubation duties:

Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) at Bempton Cliffs nest primarily in rock crevices, unlike most UK sites where burrows are used. They lay one egg and both adults incubate. Although there are an estimated 3,100 individuals here at the SPA, finding a puffin required searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. We did, however, find 9 individuals including this fellow:

This photo shows mainly Razorbills on their cliff face nest sites but one puffin is visible.  Can you find it?:

Here it is:

The last seabird we found at the Bempton Cliffs is a “tube-nose” species, the Northern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis); about 1,200 individuals have been counted at the SPA. Fulmars look much like gulls but are related to petrels and albatrosses. Their “tube-noses” are prominent tubular nostrils, and can be seen as the black area at the base of the top of the short bill on this individual. Since fulmars can spend up to 10 months on the open ocean, only coming ashore to breed, they drink seawater. They have a special gland that extracts the excess salt from their bloodstream and excretes it through these nostrils. The nostrils also enhance their sense of smell, leading them to food sources:

Northern Fulmars at their nest site under a rock ledge.

For the camera aficionados, I used a SONY RX10 iv with its Zeiss 24–600 mm zoom lens and 1”-type 20 Megapixel sensor for all the photographs.