ML354546311

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Behaviors

Flying

Observation details

First detected this storm-petrel at 11:06 by naked eye at about 300m range (from ship deck height of 13m) while flying northeast alongside the ship (port side). Distance was estimated by the standard Heinemann range finder used during ESAS surveys. Upon checking it with binoculars (8x32 Swarovski 1st gen EL's) I could see the bird was in active flight but was struck by the broad wing base, curved bend on the forewing, smoothly curved trailing edge and tapered point to the wing. Lacked the distinct arm and hand ('two part' wing) look of European Storm-petrel and wasn't as long or rangy as Leach's Storm-petrel. The bird also looked slightly larger/bulkier than European Storm-petrels that had been seen at that same range in the minutes prior to this and the extent of white around the rump and down the sides was eye catching. The flight style was quick but the flaps lacked the side to side pivoting nature of European Storm-petrel or the buoyant, deeper wingbeats of Leach's. The bird moved quickly on sleek, curved back, tapered wings with shallow wing beats and often long glides close to the waters' surface. The head was obvious looking also and the bird seemed to raise it on occasion or kept it held in a manner which made it look that way. At this stage I focused on the finer plumage features. I couldn't see any hint of white on the underwing and on two occasions I could just make out short and faint paler/brown upperwing covert bars (the light was dull/flat and the distance meant that these didn't jump out during binocular views but they could just about be seen when it banked). Once these plumage features had been noted I picked up the camera and rattled off a series of pics as the bird continued on and away from us, heading northeast. I got Justin onto the bird and it then turned, heading across in front of us and continuing on east/southeast and disappeared from view off to starboard. Last seen around 11:08. The toes projecting beyond the tail tip are visible in the images obtained but were not noted in the field (presumably due to distance). No obvious signs of wing moult which would suggest a young/juvenile bird but hard to be 100% sure given the distance and quality of the images. Quite a rare bird for Scottish waters with just six records listed by the Scottish Birds Records Committee up to the end of 2019 https://www.the-soc.org.uk/files/docs/bird-recording/sbrc/reports/SBRC2019Report.pdf (two records involving three birds in 2020 have yet to be published). Perhaps under recorded in Scottish offshore waters due to lack of survey effort/pelagic trips in suitable areas during the prime time of year? One of the 2020 records was not too far away from here, near St Kilda on 6th July, seen from this very ship by Paul Connaughton during the same annual fisheries acoustic survey for boarfish and herring conducted by the Irish Marine Institute on RV Celtic Explorer (see here https://twitter.com/shearwatertours/status/1280178593998475264).

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 7D

ISO

2000

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/3200 sec

Dimensions

1007 pixels x 804 pixels

Original file size

172.32 KB