Daption capense and the Big Guy

All albatrosses, all the time! This is a Salvin's, complete with a Cape Petrel posse....

A casual inquiry into Stewart Island pelagic cruises this morning led to me, 45 minutes later, on a boat, doped up on an alarming quantity of ginger pills, heading out into the ocean in search of seabirds.

Here's what I learned today. Ginger is a magic thing from a fantasy land of happiness, where the word "seasickness" has never been uttered, for such a thing doesn't exist. And under its influence it did not exist for me either. It is a freaking miracle drug. As in, ginger, where have you been all my life.

(There was a period of approximately 10 minutes in which I lapsed in one of the continual doses; over this span of time I was admittedly consumed by my typical mantra: "never again...never again...never again.")

The bird gods smiled upon me brightly this afternoon, granting me five new lifer species, along with hundreds of albatrosses, dainty little fairy prions, and other oceanic birds. I was able to photograph and stare at them without once retching--an amazingly gratifying experience, it turns out.

When departing the boat at the wharf, I told the skipper how great the trip was, and he said he was glad, and he encouraged me to join them on "a good day" next time. Not sure if I could handle a "good" version of today.

The List
Southern Royal Albatross
White-Capped Albatross
Salvin's Albatross
Buller's Albatross
Northern Giant Petrel
Brown Skua
Sooty Shearwater
Fairy Prion
Cape Petrel
Cook's Petrel
Blue Penguin
Stewart Island Shag
Spotted Shag
White-Fronted Tern
Black-Fronted Tern
Black-Blacked Gull
Red-Billed Gull
Black-Billed Gull
+New Zealand Fur Seals (with tiny pups!)

I managed to get decent photos of most of the oceanic species I saw today; they're up on Flickr.

I blipped this albatross before, on my much more nauseating Kaikoura pelagic.