A Pelagic Trip

Areca Harbour full of fishing boats.

Today was a part of the trip that had me a little worried.  A pelagic trip off the coast to see seabirds that don't come into shore.  The Markham storm petrols, whose nesting site we visited in the desert, fly back to their burrows after nightfall and return to the sea before dawn. 

 I'm very prone to motion sickness of any kind.  Don't worry, our guide Lalo said, it's very calm here, I never take anything, it's our trip off Valparaiso in the south that gets rough.  Great, I thought, but I'll be taking gravol.

The problem with gravol  is it makes me sleepy, so I fall asleep and then when it wears offI get a gravol hangover that makes me cranky. Long acting Gravol helps alleviate the sleepyness and the crankyness so that's what I took and hoped for the best.

Do I look sickly, sleepy or cranky?

The other problem is that seabirds are all variations of white, gray and black.

Belcher's gull

They all kind of look alike and it's very hard for me to care about the differences. Especially when sickly or sleepy or cranky.

Xx

Except for the Andean tern.

Come, on look at these dandies

So the job was to manage the symptoms.  Look at the horizon, and minimize looking through the binoculars or standing up and especially standing up and looking through the binoculars at the same time.  And try not to look too sick or too cranky or too bored.

So we set off on the long trip out into the ocean.

I did get excited about this sealing blending in with the giant concrete rip rap.

The other problem is that Leo's automatic camera does not do well in an unsteady boat. Many of his pictures turned out blurry.  So I spare you a bunch of blurry pictures of black/grey/white birds that look like seagulls.

Also his camera is not that fast so lots of photos of empty ocean. That I will also spare you.

We passed these sport fishers who were being followed by this mystery sea creature.

We were joined by another guide with two clients and a few other Chilean birders.  Here the two guides confer.

In English:  Oh I hope our clients get to see some albatross today.

In Spanish:  Let's see if we can make these gringos puke.

Here's a sooty sheerwater.

And here's an Elliot's storm petrel.  We did see one Markham's storm petrel, the species whose nest site we visited in the Atacama desert the previous day.

Species of note:  Salvins and black-browed albatrosses, a cape petrel (usually seen much further south),  and Peruvian boobies.

Our fellow birder Nick, with a better camera (and, no doubt, expertise) got better photos.

Back  in the Arica Harbour we saw a new cormorant, the very attractive red-legged cormorant.

And the Peruvian pelican, which is larger than the similar brown pelican and has a blue pouch (not very evident here).

Xx

You would think a 6-hour pelagic trip would be enough excitement for one day, but there was still more birding to be done.

But first we stopped for an excellent lunch at the home of Gerardo, an artist and chef.

Gerardo built the ramada and all the furniture as well.

The starter was corn cakes with 3 sauces, pureed olives, basil and one other.  Very delicious.

Also he had hummingbird feeders freque ted by the oasis hummingbird and the Peruvian sheartail.

Peruvian sheartail shows off his tail.

Fun fact:  Chile has only one species of  sparrow, the rufous-collared sparrow, and he's a looker!

Affectionately known as a rufy

Lifer! But we were to see these every day.

Another common bird:

West Peruvian Dove

If you're noticing a theme with the names of these birds we are seeing in Chile, that's because most of these birds are seen only in the far north of the country (and throughout Peru.  Birds, of course, don't observe borders, but they do recognize the Atacama desert which is so dry nothing can survive. (Except nesting storm petrels,  but they feed in the ocean.)

The birding was not done for the day, but this post is.