Day 16: The Lifers Continue!
South Pacific Ocean
Friday 3 January 2020
52 °F
My penultimate at-sea day aboard HMS Coral Princess consisted mainly of birding with the Irish and finding a wealth of Pacific Ocean seabirds! My first lifer of the day came almost immediately in the form of this beautifully-patterned BULLER’S SHEARWATER, of which we ended up seeing many today:
This beautiful NORTHERN ROYAL ALBATROSS was also eye candy for us:
And an immature SOUTHERN ROYAL, told by the white speckling on its wings:
PINK-FOOTED SHEARWATERS also showed periodically throughout the day:
WHITE-CHINNED PETREL — as you can see, there was a fair amount of pelagic avian diversity today. 
JUAN FERNANDEZ PETREL was my second life bird today! Look at those long wings:
SOOTY SHEARWATERS were present, but in smaller numbers today:
This distant SALVIN’S ALBATROSS was a great new find for the trip:
And my third life bird of the day was an extremely fast-moving (therefore hard-to-photograph) STEJNEGER’S PETREL, a significantly shorter-winged bird than the Juan Fernandez Petrel, which is also in the “Pteredroma” genus.
Extremely-distant GRAY-HEADED ALBATROSS:
And better looks at BULLER’S ALBATROSS than yesterday:
It was also nice to get a good look at a WESTLAND PETREL: this species is similar to the look-alike White-chinned Petrel, but differentiated by the black tip to its beak.
Bird-of-the-day to the Buller’s Shearwater with runner-up to the Juan Fernandez Petrel. Stay tuned for the last day of pelagic birding from the ship, tomorrow!
It’s been such a great trip — I haven’t yet gone a day without a life bird!
Good birding,
Henry
World Life List: 1096 Species (3 life birds today)
- you may have noticed that my life list has been fluctuating recently; this is due to a major overhaul I have had of my list, including confirming a first-seen location for every species. Due to human error, I had a few accidental double-mentions of species & misidentifications from birds back in like 2012/2013, so the list has not necessarily gone up in a logical manner everyday, but that will end now because I completed fact-checking the updated list today!
