Birdlife South Africa brand their pelagic trips as “Flocks”. First, they organised two trips into the deep waters off the southern coast of Africa, Flock to Sea (2013) and Flock to Sea Again (2017). Then in 2022 there was the original Flock to Marion and we were on Flock to Marion Again. There is even a club for those that have been on every Flock, the Four Flocks Sake club!
Each morning, there would be an announcement over the ship’s tannoy. In a thick South Africa accent, making sure that the pronunciation was just on the right side of obscenity, we would be greeted with the words “Good Morning Flockers!” This never failed to raise a smile and quickly became the standard greeting between Ian, Andy and myself.
Ian had come from Abu Dhabi, where he currently works, and had brought along Oscar Campbell (who recently co-authored the latest editon of the Birds of the Middle East), Andrew Ward and friends. It was also great to bump into Fabian Bindrich, a German birder, whom I last saw when I sat next to him for three successive afternoons in July 2019 on pelagic trips off the coast of Madeira. We have never met on land!
The rest of the 2,000 passengers were truly international. As expected, the majority were South African, but we were told that there were over 200 German birders and over 100 Swedes aboard. We also met many American and Dutch birders, but relatively few British. Ian may have been the only Australian on the ship.
Crossing The Tropical Desert
Today was our first full day at sea. The sun was hot, the sea and sky were blue. We were in warm tropical waters influenced by the Agulhas current, that brings warm water from the Indian Ocean sweeping down the east coast of Africa.
Despite all our enthusiasm and anticipation, over ten hours of seawatching produced only three bird species today: Great-winged Petrel were regular; first and last thing there were a few Cory’s Shearwaters and we saw a single Tropical Shearwater, one of the Little Shearwater complex:
Between 10am and 5pm, my eBird checklists show that we only recorded one species, Great-winged Petrel.
We struggled to think of a time when so many hours of birding had only resulted in one species of bird being recorded. We agreed that this was probably the quietest day of birding, in terms of hours put in and reward, that any of us had ever done! We went to bed rather deflated, but hoping for more tomorrow as we approached cooler waters.
Next: Peter Harrison explodes.