Recently got back from a 14 day sea trip from Tokyo to Vancouver,the trip was aboard a cruise ship that re-locates to Vancouver in spring and because it's a re-location cruise prices are relatively cheap(less than £50 a day for a cabin,all the food you can eat and plenty of entertainment in the evening),whats not to lke.The main target of doing the cruise was to see Short Tailed Albatross which was nearly driven to extinction in the 1930s but thankfully is now making a slow recovery,and as it breeds on a couple of small islands off the south island of Japan the cruise is a good way to see them as well as a number of other seabirds and a couple of gulls that I needed for my world list.We had two stops on the trip,one on Hokaido(the northern island of Japan)and one at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatca peninsular in Russia.Below is total of birds seen from the ship and seen whilst in port at the 2 stops.The ones marked by * are ticks,and the list is not in Vous but in the sequence I saw them. *Vega Gull 4 Laysan Albatross 203 South Polar Skua 2 *Short Tailed Shearwater 200+ *Streaked Shearwater 200+ *Short Tailed Albatross 3 *Black Tailed Gull 35 Arctic Skua 7 Red Necked Phalarope1000+(in one flock) Sooty Shearwater 2600 *Slaty Backed Gull 71 Peregrine 1 Glaucous Winged Gull 11 Kittiwake 142 White Wagtail 1(hitched a ride on it's northward migration) Oriental Turtle Dove 3 ( ditto) *Tufted Puffin 65 Fulmar 1000s,a lot were the Pacific race which is a fawny colour with a bright yellow bill,easily mistaken for Flesh Footed Shearwater) Pomarine Skua 2 *Least Auklet 1 Guillemot/Brunnich's Guillemot 500+ *Kamchatca Gull 2 *Fork Tailed Storm Petrel 145 Wilson's Storm Petrel 257 *Crested Auklet 8 *Murphy's Petrel 5 Black Footed Albatross14 Leach's Storm Petrel 90 Rhinocerous Auklet 19 *Horned Puffin 1 Sabines Gull 155 (including one flock of 128 birds resting on the sea by the ship !!!) Pink Footed Shearwater 1 Western Gull 12
We also saw 15 Humpbacked Whales,18 Dall's Porpoise and a few Stellers Sea Lions At Hokaido had a few ticks around the port area ---Chestnut Eared Bunting,Japanese Reed Bunting,Oriental Greenfinch,Temmincks Comorant,plus 2 potential splits Oriental Crow(Carrion Crow)and Skylark of the race Japonicus At Kamchatca ticks were Red Faced Comorant,Pelagic Comorant and two Stellers Sea Eagles which were flying around the harbour and were a great bonus bird as they've always been high on my want to see list.
