Despite the fact that a cruise seems like the perfect opportunity to sneak in a pelagic, birding from a cruise ship isn’t very easy. Most of the time the ocean is miles and miles of nothing but, well, you know the rest.
On one transatlantic crossing, I saw a total of one seabird, a Bermuda Petrel, before we got to the Azores from Fort Lauderdale. The real birding pelagics I’ve been on always involve chucking cod-liver oil into the sea from much smaller boats to attract the tube-noses, and that wasn’t about to happen here.
Without chumming with cod-liver oil or fish guts, one has to be very fortunate to see any animal life on the briny deep. I’ve to learned this the hard way. Sitting next to a ship’s window with binoculars poised becomes laughable after a while. Later in the day, you can at least order a cocktail, which looks to non-birding passengers like having one of those was your purpose all along.
We had great luck, though, on a recent cruise in the western Caribbean. This happened when the ship passed through a school of flying fish around the time we were looking out the coffee shop window. Suddenly numerous Brown Boobies, a Red-footed Booby or two, and a Masked Booby appeared and began chasing down the fliers. A remarkable sight! The fish are about a foot long, and very fast.
Flying Fish
Probably one fish in five lost the race, zooming across the surface for 50 or 60 feet, only to be picked off at the last moment. Would avoiding the birds have saved them? Maybe. But, no doubt the fish took to the air because something else was pursuing them – tuna maybe, or a school of jacks, or swordfish even. So, for these remarkable creatures, danger lurked above and below.
Brown Boobies, dressed in formal dark-chocolate brown and white, seemed especially good at picking off a meal as it skimmed through the ship’s wake, wing-like fins flashing.
The birds are very fast, and agile. Being at a window when the flying fish and the Boobies appeared was pure coincidence, and the best kind of luck.
Brown Booby
Red-footed Booby
Luckily, cruise ships also dock, which meant Half Moon Cay, Aruba, then Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and Jamaica, for us. Lots of birding opportunities.
Half Moon Cay is a private island belonging to the cruise company. It’s a beach place in the Bahamas. V. and I aren’t beach people so the island held little interest for us, especially after the snorkelling trip we’d signed up for was cancelled because of the wind.
However, using going for beer as an excuse, I left V. under an umbrella and took the long way to the bar on the chance that I might see some birds. It was mid-day, but you never know. Within a few minutes, I’d seen seven Royal Terns, a Bahama Mockingbird, a Common Ground Dove, and two Yellow-rumped Warblers.
My favourite bird here, though, was a lovely and agreeable Louisiana Waterthrush, freshly-feathered and ready for spring. Like the Bahama Mockingbird, a lifer for me, but, unfortunately, since we were supposed to be snorkelling, I hadn’t brought a camera! I had failed to learn my lesson once again.
Bird Noetz 