Dermot Breen's Blog

Saturday, 18 April 2020

Coral Princess 3rd January 2020

We covered around 800km today as we made our way north eventually ending up near Puerto Montt. As we were offshore, we didn't get a chance to see Pincoya Storm-Petrel which are supposed to be found only within fjords of Puerto Montt and the Chacao Channel and not the open sea. A few notable observations of the day were the large numbers of Juan Fernandez Petrel seen throughout the day. We also had our first of the similar but much smaller Stejneger's Petrel. We also had our first Salvin's Albatross of the trip. Although we would see more the following day we never saw significant numbers and they always seemed to keep their distance from the boat. Our time along the Chilean Pacific coastline was limited enough before the cruise came to an end and there was a bit of pressure to clean up on the last of the Pacific specialities for this area before it all finished.

Species	Day Count
Buller's Albatross	4
Salvin's Albatross	5
Black-browed Albatross	8
Southern/Northern Royal Albatross	1
Southern Royal Albatross	1
Northern Royal Albatross	2
wandering albatross sp.	1
large albatross sp.	1
Southern Giant Petrel	6
Northern Giant Petrel	2
Northern/Southern Giant Petrel	7
Juan Fernandez Petrel	217
Stejneger's Petrel	7
White-chinned Petrel	7
Procellaria sp.	19
Pink-footed Shearwater	51
Buller's Shearwater	42
Sooty Shearwater	449
Wilson's Storm Petrel	109
Chilean Skua	1

Southern Royal Albatross (white leading edge to wings just visible + more white on scapulars).

Northern Royal Albatross (more black on scapualrs).

Northern Royal Albatross ( dark leading edges to wings).

Northern Royal Albatross

Northern Royal Albatross (bigger black wdge on leading edge of underside of the "hand")

Northern Giant Petrel

Juan Fenandez Petrel

Pink-footed Shearwater

Buller's Shearwater

Monday, 13 April 2020

Coral Princess 2nd January 2020

It was goodbye to Patagonian and back out onto the open sea as we left the mouth of the Strait of Magellan and began to make our way to our next and final destination San Antonio. On our way north we unfortunately weren't very far offshore, on average 50km from the mainland. It would have been more ideal to be a bit further offshore. However it was far from quiet and we had a very impressive combined list for the day, including 18 tubenose species. These included lifers in the form of Buller's Albatross, Westland Petrel, Pink-footed, Buller's Shearwater and Common Diving-Petrel. The commonest diving-petrel inside the Magellan Strait was unsurprisingly Magellanic Diving-Petrel whereas Common Diving-Petrels took over outside of the strait. These two species were a little difficult to get proper views or photos of as they tended to spend most of their time sitting on the water and would fly off well before the ship got close. Their tiny size also made things challenging.
Another good day for albatross with our first obvious candidates for Antipodean and Northern Royal Albatross. At one stage we had 50 wandering albatross following behind the boat. Most were way back off the stern. As they vary so hugely the majority are very difficult to pin down to species.

Day tally.

Chilean Skua	2
South American Tern	3
Grey-headed Albatross	1
Buller's Albatross	6
Black-browed Albatross	100
Southern Royal Albatross	13
Northern Royal Albatross	1
wandering albatross sp.	101
Wandering Albatross	5
Antipodean Albatross	5
large albatross sp.	7
Wilson's Storm Petrel	220
Southern Giant Petrel	45
Northern Giant Petrel	1
White-chinned Petrel	2
Westland Petrel	1
Procellaria sp.	8
Pink-footed Shearwater	6
Buller's Shearwater	1
Sooty Shearwater	2015
Manx Shearwater	2
Common Diving Petrel	111
Magellanic Diving Petrel	1
diving petrel sp.	5