Having never been to sea off the Natal coast, Barry Porter's email was the prod I needed to get myself down to Durban onto one of these trips. The subsequent reports of "hundreds" of Flesh footed Shearwaters being found had me desperate to get down there! Debbie and I booked onto the trip for 27th June. With all the storms and bad weather around the country, David called to tell me it had been cancelled, but he was putting on a replacement trip for the 4th July. Worried that the Shearwaters would disappear, we quickly let him know we would be on that one.

Travelling down from Jo'burg early on the Friday, we found the traffic somewhat heavy, then realising it was because we were clashing with the Durban July. We got to Durban at midday, and headed straight to Pigeon Valley, to spend the afternoon there. We had a great time and saw plenty of Spotted Ground Thrushes, the resident Sparrowhawk pair, amongst others.

The next morning, we met up at the Yacht Club parking (before nearly getting onto a fishing boat by going to the wrong parking spot!). We got onto the Allure and started the trip out to deeper water, Len the skipper telling us that a trawler had been seen heading out the previous day. David told us that we'd be lucky to find it, most trawlers gave their crew leave over the winter and put the boat in for running repairs. We started picking up small numbers of birds, White Chinned Petrels and Indian Yellow nosed Albatrosses making up the bulk of these. We then saw a boat in the distance which turned out to be a trawler, it was our lucky day. We picked up two trawlers, and birds were strung out along their wakes.

Later in the day, we were fortunate enough to come back to one of the trawlers shortly after it had lifted the nets and was discarding bits and pieces of fish into the sea, which had attracted seabirds in their hundreds, with a vast majority being Indian Yellow nosed Albatrosses. In amongst the squawking birds, we found some Shy and Black-browed Albatrosses, which had eluded us up to that point in the day. These two larger Albatrosses bullied the smaller Yellow nosed off the scraps, as can be seen in a few of the photos.

In order of appearance, some links to some pictures I took during the day are below:

Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross
White Chinned Petrel
Swift Tern (previously taken pictures)
Cape Gannet
Wilson's Storm Petrel (higher numbers than normal for KZN seas seen during this trip)
Sooty Shearwater (also more numerous than normal)
Flesh-footed Shearwater (definitely the highlight of the day for me!)
Shy Albatross
Black-browed Albatross
Sub-antarctic Skua (from previous trips)
Common Tern (from previous trips)

In spite of the bumpy seas (which are still what the Capetonians would call flat!), it was a great day out, thanks to David and the crew of the Allure.