Our birding tour starts at 9AM and while searching for parking we are getting a bit stressed that we might be late. But in the end we find parking close enough and then make with five minutes to spare to the pier. And just then the boat is pulling in, it has no canopy so we are greatful that there is some cloud cover during the trip.
Everyone is here on time and after getting the life vests and a short safety briefing we are on our way on what really seems to be a flimsy boat to go out in the ocean. At least the chairs have shock absorbers so we hope we won’t have bruises from the many waves that we are going to encounter.
We pass next the airport runway first and are treated to planes taking off in what still looks like a dangerous manner to us. And we will have to leave this way also in a few days.
When getting a place in the boat we were able to get only one in the back so we have some issues in taking photos towards the front, in fact there is only one direction we can take photos in. But even that is enough we hope, we want to see four pelagic birds on the trip and hopefully some whales and dolphins.
And soon we start seeing seabirds. Some of them are clear what they are like the Bulwer Petrel, but some are simply called pterodroma and can be either Fea or Zino petrels. At home with a lot of checking of photos we identify some of both Fea and Zino but that is almost impossible in the boat that is shaking with birds passing us for 1-2 seconds at most.
And then we have the Cory Shearwater which is very easily identifiable as they really seem to shear the weather as they pass near to us. And they are also quite different from the petrels here.
However we do not see any dolphins and whales and it seems that the other boats out are unsuccessful as well as we understand from our guides that are in radio contact with them.
We move here we move there and even though we continue to see lots of pelagics there is no luck with the whales, quite unfortunate.
And then the tour draws to a close and the boat starts approaching the shore. Here we start to also see some Common Terns mixed with the Shearwaters, the petrels start to disappear as we approach the land.
We are next passing the seawall where sometimes rarities are seen but today the only unusual bird seen is a Ruddy Turnstone near a group of common terns.
And then we approach Machico following the coast and now we notice something new. At the harbor entrance is a fort that we mark to visit later when we are back on terra firma.
Soon we enter the calmer waters of the harbor and see the beach and then it is time to file out the boat and up to the dock. It was quite a bumpy ride but the shock absorbers worked ok and we also saw all birds we wanted. Too bad that no dolphins or whales graced us with their presence but they are wild animals and can do what they want maybe another time we will be more lucky.
