ML112914381

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

***Light morph individual coming in to our slick at roughly 9:25 and was in view (to the delight of all on board) for over 4 minutes. Gadfly petrel with all dark back and upper wings, white-belly and upper-breast, giving it a dark-hooded appearance. Mostly dark underwing with mostly whitish greater coverts and primary bases, manifesting as a broad white stripe extending from the axillaries through the primaries (almost from body to wingtip). BF recap from a week later: while standing about midway back on the starboard side of the upper deck, I had a bird naked-eye at about 2 o’clock that could have been a GRSH. In the bins it was immediately apparent that it was something exquisite, and I felt like my brain was splitting in three and time slowed slightly. Although I had not seen the species, Trindade Petrel was my first guess (honest!), thanks in part to various conversations over the preceding 12 hours. However, Trindade was not my last guess, also due to those conversations, in which LTJA was remarked as being superficially alike to Trindade in plumages. While this all is running through my head, the bird is approaching the bow. As it banks in good light, jaeger sp is rapidly out of the picture again, but suddenly an image of Tahiti Petrel is in my head and I realized there are a number of other possible, yet far less likely species that this could also be. Trindade with a question mark is the front runner, but regardless of punctuation I realized that the Portuguese in my head had never been practiced out loud. Out of focus ship railings are visible in my bins and I realize that the two seconds of observation, idea, and doubt are more than sufficient to warrant yelling before I lose the bird behind the bow. I believe it appeared briefly on the port side around 11 with several eyes on it, at which Tom fired “TRINDAHDJAY [oh the ‘j’ sound was in the last consonant, right] PETREL” giantly. It crossed back over again a d blasted down the starboard side in excellent light and continued to circle the boat at least twice more before heading off from the direction it came. It was independently spotted by at least one other person sitting on the deck just below me, and was then quickly seen by everyone on the boat during the whole four minutes it was in sight.

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 80D

Lens

EF400mm f/5.6L USM

ISO

800

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/4000 sec

Dimensions

4615 pixels x 3077 pixels

Original file size

1.83 MB