8 September 2024: Day 2, birding close to Chipiona, WINGS Spain in Autumn. Pelagic eBird Hotspot = Salida Pelágica desde Chipiona Click on right here to look (normally) the place I’m lately.
This morning we’re on the coast in pretty climate. However out to sea, past the continental shelf, the wind is blowing laborious and the ocean is just too tough for our deliberate pelagic birding excursion within the Gulf of Cadiz in a ship that with ease holds 12 other folks.
No drawback. There are many birds to look from land, a few of which we’d have noticed at the boat and I’m keen to cross up a possibility to be told about seasickness.
One in every of birds we can’t see from land is the severely endangered Balearic shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus).
The Balearic Shearwater is among the rarest birds in Europe, being one in all simply two species there to be indexed as Severely Endangered at the IUCN Pink Listing. Its a hit conservation would require substantial effort, throughout nation borders. As its identify implies, as a breeder this shearwater is confined to the Spanish-owned Balearic Islands within the western Mediterranean, the place its inhabitants is normally estimated at simply 1,800–2,500 breeding pairs (of which about 50% nest on Mallorca).
… Counts at sea (particularly throughout the Strait of Gibraltar) counsel it’s perhaps extra a large number of, which has ended in a revised estimate of 24,000–26,500 people.
This hen could be in point of fact uncommon. Or there could be 10 instances as many as we idea.
Balearic shearwaters are continuously noticed in autumn within the Gulf of Cadiz as they depart their breeding grounds at the Balearic Islands within the Mediterranean …
… and transfer to the Atlantic and the North Sea for the wintry weather.
To me shearwaters all glance the similar so I’d by no means have recognized I used to be taking a look at a Balearic shearwater with out a information. They’re a little bit like complicated fall warblers. 