Having had one of the least productive birding days of our lives yesterday, we awoke on Sunday 26th January for our third day on the ship. We were just over half way to Marion Island at dawn, but within twenty-four hours would be within 20km of the Prince Edward Islands, the closest that we would be allowed to approach. Overnight we had transitioned into much cooler waters. The air temperature had also dropped, fleeces and jackets replacing the t-shirts of yesterday. Immediately there were birds!
Our first Black-bellied Storm Petrels danced low over the water, and our first Soft-plumaged Petrels sheared past.
Chunky White-chinned Petrels rapidly replaced Great-winged Petrels as the default all-dark seabird accompanying the ship.
And finally there were albatrosses. Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross was the most frequent visitor, some being close enough to pick out the yellow stripe on top of the bill and the orange bill tip:
Fabulous all-dark Sooty Albatrosses began appearing too, though we would see many more of these birds over the next few days:
It was a special moment when our first great albatrosses of the Wandering Albatross complex appeared behind the ship. The local breeders on Marion Island are Snowy Albatrosses, Diomedea exulans. These birds are the largest Wandering-type albatrosses, with some birds having a 3.5m (11 foot) wingspan. A close pass by one of these enormous birds, felt more like being passed by a small fixed-wing aircraft:
Andy and I stood on deck 14, the top deck, watching a huge Wandering-type albatross performing gentle loops over the sea behind the boat. Suddenly and surprisingly, world famous seabird author Peter Harrison was standing next to us. He said “Check out the albatross following the ship, because from the photographs that I’ve seen I don’t think it’s a Wandering”.
We knew that the only other realistic option was that the bird was a Tristan Albatross and that Peter Harrison has devoted much time to distinguishing these two species in the field. According to Harrison’s own work (Seabirds: the new identification guide, 2021) only male Tristan Albatrosses of a certain age can be separated from Snowy Albatrosses. These birds have uniformly dark wings, especially the forewing, with distinct white elbow patches in the mid-wing. Ideally there is little black in the tail too. According to Harrison, no Snowy Albatross shows this exact pattern on the wing and tail and these birds can safely be identified as Tristan Albatrosses.
My first reaction, unvoiced, was that it seemed remarkable coincidence that as soon as we starting seeing great albatrosses, a candidate Tristan Albatross should appear. We walked to the back of the ship with Peter, where he saw and photographed the albatross. He then exclaimed, memorably, “Excuse my language, but there’s no way that’s a f*****g Wanderer!” Peter Harrison was adamant that this bird was a Tristan Albatross and he found pictures of stage 6 Tristan Albatrosses in an A4 folder that he carried that looked very similar.
Over the next few days, we became aware that not everyone was convinced that these birds might be seperable. Indeed, both Peter Ryan (article here) and Hadoram Shirihai appear to doubt that these two species can be reliably separated in the field. We saw candidate Tristan Albatrosses on a number days when we were around Marion Island:
Some of the South African guides expressed the view that bearing in mind the identification difficulties, it just seemed more likely that these birds were Snowy Albatrosses from the local breeding colony on Marion, rather than Tristan Albatrosses, all the way from Tristan da Cunha in the central south Atlantic. We decided to let the experts debate this one and moved on.
As the day wore on and we sailed further south into even cooler waters, we began seeing another bird in the Little Shearwater complex, Subantarctic Shearwaters. These birds were the cold-water compatriot of the Tropical Shearwaters that we were seeing yesterday. The demarcation between where different seabird species were found seemed very precise and yet was completely invisible to human senses.
It had been an incredible day, our first real experience of the seabirds of the Southern Oceans. Our concerns about viewing seabirds from a large ship had been alleviated. There was no seasickness, despite some windy days. Deck 7, and both the bow and the stern, provided excellent viewing. The atmosphere on board was convivial, there was plenty of space for nearly 2,000 birders to spread out, even though deck 7 could get busy in peak periods. We were ready for Marion.
Next: we arrive at Marion Island and nearly loose our minds.