A great day out in deeper waters wildlife watching

A 10-hour trip heading out West into deeper waters in the hope of coming across rare sea birds and cetaceans. Although we did not find what we might have hoped to find, the full boat of passengers all had a great day. 

The Rathlin Express set off from Tobermory harbour in slightly wet, but pretty calm conditions and it wasn’t long before we saw common dolphins and porpoises. We also saw a recently fledged white tailed eagle chick with its mother. 

Its father, I was told, is in hospital. It was found on the shore with a broken ankle and was captured and taken to get nursed back to health. Hopefully it can be returned to its family before the female finds another mate or the chick suffers from a lack of food. 

Its maybe unlikely for the female eagle to find another mate whilst it has a chick to feed, but I guess another male could come in and kill the fledged chick and muscle in to become the female’s new mate. Nature can be cruel. Let’s hope all ends well with that story. 

Once out in deeper waters we undertook an experiment and sailed along dragging a bag of fish bits in the hope we would attract petrels who, with their tube noses, have the amazing ability to smell food from a long way off. It worked! 

We had a large number of stunning little storm petrels following the boat picking off tiny bits of fish amongst the fish oil slick. 

Good numbers of fulmar, another tube nosed petrel, also came in for the hand out. 

Gulls and the odd gannet came in for the scraps, too, and they in turn attracted the great skuas, which all provided the onlookers and photographers on board a wonderful close up spectacle of them competing for the bits escaping the bag. 

We made our way to the Hawes bank, a shallow area surrounded by deep waters which is well known for cetacean sightings. 

There was a large number of very keen and skilled bird watchers and cetacean spotters on board, and it wasn’t long before we started seeing minke whales and other avian treats such as a flock of migrating black tailed godwits and a single swift.