Sea Birds — My Trips

We are surrounded by sea birds. I guess they’re primarily gulls, terns, petrels and albatross. There’s a great variety. There are gulls that are predominantly grey, some very black smaller birds (storm petrels), and some speckled ones. We’ve spotted many albatrosses. No frigates yet and no boobies.

The most spectacular are the wandering albatross. They are a brilliant white with black wings, yellow beaks and perfectly aligned primary feathers. These guys obviously take pride in their appearance: Extremely clean looking, not the mangy sea birds that are often seen hanging around waterfronts. They’re also a far cry from the albatross chicks we saw in the Galapagos. They look more like the sanitized, Disney/Pixar version. If some of them start crying “mine, mine, mine” I will become very suspicious.

Out of all the birds we are seeing, these albatross are easily the best gliders, with their wing tips at the end of their 12 ft wingspans just inches from the wave crests. Then they will climb 20 or 30 feet above the surface, coast in a broad arc and descend along the water again for another graceful glide.

I remember some of our ocean crossings in the past. The gulls would follow the ship from seemingly beginning to end, riding the breeze just off the stern. That was a different era when no one gave much thought to dumping garbage or meal scraps off the back of the ship. The gulls would wait for that to happen and then pounce on the surface of the water to get what they could. I think these birds have a more natural diet. It’s more of a situation where we are plowing through their hunting grounds rather than them following us.

I blew off a lecture on sea birds this morning, but now I’m regretting it a bit.