Then came some Buller’s Albatross.  I hadn’t seen these on my earlier trips in the summer, apparently they are much more common in the winter months.

Finally the A team arrived: the “great albatrosses”.  First some Wandering Albatross, then a Southern Royal.  These birds are simply enormous.  Sitting on the water, their bodies look larger than a turkey. 

(that’s a Giant Petrel flying past)

In the air however, these bodies look tiny between the giant wings.

Eventually the remaining bait is thrown in and all the birds get a turn.

It’s a trip I can thoroughly recommend! 

You’ll find quite a few pictures of the various albatross species in my wildlife galleries (see link at the start of this post), along with other seabirds.

I booked a tour with “Albatross Encounters“,  who operate out of Kaikoura.  It’s the same company that run “Dolphin Encounters”, but more on that at the end of this post.

I got some great images.  This first one is a closeup of a female Wandering Albatross, with mating plumage accentuated by a diet of shrimps and krill:

Wandering Albatross (Diomedea antipodensis)

These wonderful birds have a wingspan of  around 3 metres and breed on the sub-Antarctic Islands way south of New Zealand.  They are common around Kaikoura at this time of year, no doubt drawn by the abundant marine life.  On the water, they are at times a lot more aggressive than on land:

More reserved were the Northern Royal Albatross, distinguished by the black line along the cutting edge of it’s bill:

Northern Royal Albatross (Diomedea sanfordi)

It was fun to see these large birds sailing into the action with their wings arranged to make themselves as impressive as possible:

We really did get very close to the birds.  This next shot was taken with a 14mm wide angle lens.  The bird in the foreground is a Cape Pigeon or Cape Petrel, Daption capense.

This guy, known affectionately as #512,  has been banded and is seen frequently on these birding trips.  They lose their darker colouring as they grow older.

Juvenile Wandering or Antipodian Albatross (diomedea gibsoni)

A few more images:

Salvin's Albatross (Thalassarche salvini)

We saw 6 different species of albatross that morning.  It was an excellent trip, one I certainly can recommend.  Our skipper Gary was an old sea salt who knew a lot about (and was interested in) the birds we were seeing.

If you are interested in albatross, then the book “Albatross” by Tui De Roy, Mark Jones and Julian Fitter (published by David Bateman Ltd) has many beautiful photographs and a lot of good science as well.

I mentioned the dolphin encounters earlier.  It appears that the tourist operators are still running these trips in a way that greatly adds to the experience.  Instead of dropping the swimmers in amongst the dolphins, they are placed quite some distance away and told to make themselves interesting.  If they are interesting enough, then the dolphins will choose to come and swim with them.  Of course, they almost always do, but that’s not the point: it’s the dolphins’ choice.  We had one person on our trip who had been out with the Dusky Dolphins at dawn.  She was still on a high from the experience, which seems to be the usual reaction.  As a New Zealander, it’s a pleasure hearing about tourism done well!

Even though the fishing was not great, we all came home with some nice fish and a crayfish or two.  My neighbours were delighted to receive some blue cod fillets, always best eaten fresh.

As usual, the bird life was just great. At least a couple of different varieties of albatross, giant petrels, shearwaters, plus lots of gulls.  Here are some examples:

The gull gives a sense of scale

a Flesh-footed shearwater

Salvin's Albatross

The fish is about 20 cm + long!

Photographing them under these circumstances is tough!  I was using a big telephoto which has a very narrow depth of focus.  So on the pitching boat I had to track the birds well enough for the autofocus sensors to latch onto them.  It was hard enough to keep the birds in the frame, let alone get them in focus. Thank heavens for digital photography!  When I got home, I think I deleted 70% or so of the images and ended up posting about 10% or so.

You can find them here (along with pictures of my fishing mates) in low resolution, or the best in higher resolution in my birdlife galleries.

But I got lucky.  I had the camera to my eye when I noticed a bird swooping in towards us.  He did only one quick pass as I struggled to track him and get off a series of quick shots.  Only afterwards when I studied the images did I realise just what I had captured.  It was a Wandering Albatross, one of the very largest!  Adults have a wingspan approaching 4 metres, with a body length of  more than a metre.  None of the pics is a world beater (he was already too close to fit in the frame when I first saw him), but I was delighted with them.

Wandering albatross

Wandering albatross

Wandering albatross

You will find more birdlife pics at New Zealand Pictures Online.