Bird Fair, Orkney and St Kilda

Well it has been a pretty busy time since getting back to the UK! We had a pretty successful Bird Fair over the weekend, with numbers of people attending seeming to be down on usual, but some good interest, and great to make contact with some other tour operators who would like to come to New Zealand. So some exciting things to look forward to with regards to our NZ tours. As usual a lot of good food and fun times with the rest of the kiwi operators and others, and great to catch up with a bunch of good friends and make some new ones.

Then after the Bird Fair it was on the train to Edinburgh where I got onto the MS Island Sky. We are doing a trip down the west coast, ending up in Portsmouth. Yesterday we stopped at Orkney, visiting the usual sites, and as we left did a pass by the Old Man of Hoy. The light was absolutely spectacular, with my previous visits having been with dark conditions or raining. Luckily a massive rain storm had just passed, and the sun shone with a massive rainbow right along the cliffs, just gorgeous. So got some nice shots.

Then today we landed on St Kilda, my 8th visit I think, managing to land everytime to date…luckily! The weather was a little on and off, but we managed to dodge most of the rain showers. I led a walk up to 'The Gap' where we had lovely views out over the stacks, and a few interesting flowers. Arctic and great skuas were about, and we had views of the wren, meadow pipits and wheatears. But the focus for me was a snowy owl which had been on the island most of the summer. I have always dreamt of seeing this bird, but missed them at other places where I've been. So it was a real trek up and over to the other side of the island, and scanning for about five minutes I thought this was going to be another wasted trip…but then I spotted a white blob right down in the bottom of the valley on a broken down stone cleat. Running down into the valley it was obvious this was the bird as we got closer, and managed to get reasonably close with some great views and a couple of record shots. Awesome - absolutely stoked! Lifer!


Gary Melville and Lynette Buurman (Albatross Encounter) and Sav at the Bird Fair


The lightouse on Bass Rock backlit with hundreds of gannets in flight


Northern gannets flying over the Bass Rock colony


The lightouse again with gannets


Northern gannet flying over the ship towards the Bass


Cathedral against a stormy sky at Stromness, Orkney


The cliffs of Hoy, with the 'Old Man of Hoy' in the distance


The cliffs of Hoy with a stunning rainbow over them


Double rainbow…what does it mean??!!


Gold at the end of the rainbow perhaps


The rainbow coming up out of the cliffs of Hoy


The Old Man of Hoy in stunning light


The Old Man, imagine climbing that


Again' '
Again' '
The Old Man, with full frontal light


Village Bay on St Kilda with the ship anchored


Snowy owl! What a beauty!


In flight


In flight with Soay sheep in the background

Leaving again…seems like only yesterday I got home!

So has been strangely quiet on here since I got home just over three weeks ago. Life has been its usual hectic self, with quite some time spent sorting out things for our planned house build. It's hard to believe we are getting very close to actually starting, and looking forward to the foundations being poured and the real work beginning. Pretty exciting!

Also spent a fair bit of time backing up images from the last trips to the UK and Svalbard, starting to sort those, and also setting up a new laptop…finally gone completely Mac and boy is it nice (except for a minor meltdown whereby I had to completely reinstall the operating system four days into using it!).

So now it is back to the UK where I will be heading straight up to the Bird Fair to attend that with Sav, where we will both be promoting Wrybill Birding Tours, NZ - mainly our 21-day New Zealand wide tour. Should be an excellent event as it always is, with this being the fourth year I have attended.

Then it is on to Leith, Edinburgh where I will join the MV Island Sky for a cruise down through Scotland to Portsmouth, before heading to Spain for a week or so, and then to Istanbul to join the MV Clipper Odyssey for a trip with Zegrahm Expeditions around the Black Sea. I've not been to Spain, Turkey, or the Black Sea, so this should be fun! Home end of September, but in the meantime watch this space!


A male polar bear I spent over an hour with from a zodiac whilst up in North-East Svalbard looks out towards me whilst sniffing the air.

Really! Can it get any better?

Just back in Longyearbyen, Svalbard after the third of four Svalbard trips with Lindblad Expeditions on the MS National Geographic Explorer.  Incredible trip...they just seem to keep getting better!  We had 62 Polar bears sighted during the trip, with a female seen to kill a seal, lots of cubs, 5 bears approaching the bow over the course of a morning, and again a blue whale right on the bow of the ship.

Unfortunately not enough time to write a full blog, and most of the photos are uploaded to my Eco-Vista facebook page, so below are just a couple...

No flukes...but OH MY GOD!

Well just back into Longyearbyen for another turnover of guests onboard the National Geographic Explorer with Lindblad Expeditions.  The first trip was great, and this second one was also fantastic, but in the final hours of yesterday it become one of those absolutely unforgettable experiences...

Due to the really rapid melt of the pack ice this season, we had a couple of stops along the Spitsbergen coast (west and north) and through the Hinlopen Strait before then spending much of two days in the pack to the north of Svalbard.  On the way north we managed to glimpse a blue whale again, but had great interactions with some very close fin whales.  We managed to get just north of 81 degrees and at times were in quite thich pack ice - a very cool experience.  We did see several really excellent bears around Hinlopen, with a mother and first year cub near a very large male, then a few bears on fast ice, but a wee way off, until we had another awesome encounter with a curious young bear that came right into the bow of the ship and checked us out.  Absolutely stunning opportunities with the camera and so got some more good stuff.  Straight after that encounter we watched a mother and cub swimming!  The little guy was only about six months old and was riding the female as she swam, and although not up close as we really kept our distance, we had amazing views of this behaviour.  As she hauled out on the shore the little guy was still riding her back and then finally slipped off into the snow when she was up from the shore.  Just amazing, and fun to watch them then move along the shore.

We spent a lot of time searching for bears on the pack ice, and found one bear that wasn't interested in us, plus another was seen swimming in the middle of the night.  We also encountered harp seals and damn it (!!!!!) a very brief sighting of narwhal, but I wasn't on the bridge and it was so fleeting that I missed them!!!!  Nevermind, maybe more???

We had a couple more stops up around the north including Phippsoya Is, one of the most northerly of the archipelago, and then back down past Monacobreen, etc.  Again we encountered another two big males and a female with a first year cub, and with these the last of our bears taking the tally to 15 bears (inc cubs).  A pretty nice tally with some great behaviour and interactions as well.

But then on our last afternoon as we headed back down to Longyearbyen we hit the absolute hotspot!  In almost flat calm, no wind conditions we had a massive blue whale.  With relatively close views of this animal and some accompanying white-beaked dolphins we were pretty happy.  I decided to go up to the top deck to see if I could get some different shots and was standing on the top deck with everyone around me when all of a sudden i could see a massive shape looming up right beside the bow!  I started yelling at the top of my voice and everyone suddenly screamed and started clicking.  It surfaced right beside the bow twice, but of course I had my 400mm lens on and so everything was full frame head shots.  You could absolutely see everything under the water, including the fins and tail, plus the massive open mouth and pleats!!!  Just incredible.  It then dived and so I ran down and changed to my 70-200mm and went back to the top deck, thinking there was no possible way it would happen again....and it did!  This time surfacing three times on both sides of the bow....unbelievable!  Again I was screaming at the top of my lungs that it was coming up again and people were just blown away.  Apparently the Capt was screaming down on the bridge as well so it would have been absolutely scrazy down there as well, just incredible.  Having seen them so well last week, this was just incredible...and I got it all on my GoPro that I was wearing.  I can't wait to download and look at the footage as it will undoubtedly be hilarious with me screaming and yelling and people running around everywhere.

Anyway, off again this afternoon on another adventure...can't wait.  Some photos below and will be posted on my Eco-Vista facebook page...