Holiday Cornwall, Boat out of Falmouth

 With the lack of wind, Seawatching had been non-existent all hopes for Seabirds were pinned on our boat trip with AK Wildlife Cruises, we have been out before with them and can highly recommend them. Their website is at the link

AK Wildlife Cruises

We arrived at Falmouth Harbour, at 10am for our 5 hour Cruise, last time we sailed the weather was pretty poor with very choppy seas, but today was thankfully very calm. See the link below for last year's trip be warned it is not for the faint hearted!

High Seas

The first wildlife encountered were some very big fish in the Marina, think they are Grey Mullet, we saw several shoals of small fry as well!

We set sail and headed out into the estuary, regular readers will remember I like to start most of our boat trips with a Shag but couldn't get one! A Swan and an Oystercatcher flew by, as we passed the Falmouth Docks we all had our fingers crossed that the unexploded bomb, which had seen part of the town evacuated, wouldn't go off . it didn't phew💣! Then  Margie pointing at the docks whispered to me is that a Crane! Now as you know I've fallen for this before, but she said no, pointing towards a large bird flying over the docks, carried away and recalling our Somerset trip ,I called Crane, however as it banked I realised it was a White Stork!! It got very confusing with "Crane over the Crane, no White Stork over the Crane etc etc!!😂 I didn't cover myself in glory to be honest😂

White Stork

White Stork over Crane

Mute Swan

Oystercatcher

Even out here Margie gets a Castle

As we headed out to see we began to see Gannets and the first Manx Shearwaters, we were also joined by a pod of Common Dolphin that rode our bow wave, they stayed with us for most of the trip! We basically mooched around the area, spotting feeding birds the skipper would then take us in close to see what was underneath. Which was mostly Common Dolphins! A bit of quality with a Dark Phase Balearic Shearwater and two Sooty Shearwaters. Sadly even with several stringing attempts using 2CY  Gannets I couldn't get either a Great or Cory's Shearwater. 😢  Apparently they have been thin on the ground in the area the boat trips cover this year. Some pics below, obviously we were on a moving boat, on a moving sea, taking pictures of moving birds, so the quality wasn't  quite what I hoped! getting the excuses in early!! 😂😂

Starting with a phone video of the Dolphins, which were really the highlight of the trip! Be a good idea to watch the video on full screen, don't worry it's only 47 seconds long!!

A few pics of the Common Dolphins below it was a bit difficult as they were mostly very close to the boat! 

Actually got one with it's head out of the water

Gannet, lots about nice to see them diving

Manx Shearwater, several large groups on the sea

Manx getting out of the way of a young Gannet

2nd Calendar Year Gannet

Fairly sure this is a Common Tern rather than an Arctic 

Adult Gannet having a rest

Juvenile Gannet, 2CY Gannet and Manxies

Manx Shearwater

This sort of frenzy happened quite  a lot with the Gannets, Shearwaters and Gulls benefitting from the Dolphins efforts

Balearic Shearwater a very dark individual, probably one of the rarest birds I've ever seen with a breeding population estimated at just 3000 pairs

Manx Shearwater

Pretty sure this is a Sooty Shearwater 

Another Dolphin encounter. They were pretty much present throughout the trip, difficult to say how many, there were nine at the bow at one point!

Med Gull, saw a few missed the close shots

Cormorant

Finally got me Shag!!

Mute Swan

A couple more Dolphin videos below!! Can't have enough Dolphin videos in my opinion

A fabulous trip, making up for the lack of Seawatching, I've seen Dolphins on numerous occasions, but this was by far the best. Seeing these intelligent creatures, riding the bow waves for fun, makes what we are doing to the oceans, their home, even more depressing. 

We can't recommend AK Wildlife cruises enough, the two guys running our trip, were very knowledgeable and good at spotting stuff, very skilled manoeuvring of the boat got us close enough to the action, without ever disturbing the birds, quite a feat considering the feeding frenzies we encountered, it was clear the animals welfare came first!