Sightings

The new seabird breeding season is well underway this spring, and the cliffs at Troup Head and along the coast are busy with all kinds of feathered seafarers returning to their nests. The gannets have been arriving back since February and we saw our first puffins in the first week of April 2008. We have also seen flocks of long tailed ducks - these shy and beautiful birds are winter visitors to the Moray Firth so we're enjoying spotting them for the moment, before they head off to breed in the high Arctic .

Recent Bird Sightings:

• Gannet
• Puffin
• Guillemot
• Black guillemot
• Razorbill
• Shag
• Cormorant
• Fulmar
• Kittiwake
• Herring gull
• Eider duck
• Long tailed duck
• Oyster catcher

Recent Mammal Sightings:

• We almost always see loads of common and grey seals- particularly around Troup Head and east of Pennan where they gather together and hang out on the rocks. We've seen lots of fluffy youngsters too, who are curious to know what this big orange thing that passes them from time to time is...

• We have been lucky enough to spot bottlenose dolphins on several trips already- seen for the first time this year on Saturday 14th March 2008. There were around 20 of them spread out east of Pennan. Another large group joined Buchaneer on 8th April and spent some time bowriding with us and leaping alongside - fantastic! We're hoping for lots more encounters in the coming months.
• We had some great encounters with harbour porpoises last year, usually seen around Pennan Bay. These tiny cetaceans are hard to spot as they surface quickly but they tend to mill around and sometimes we've seen them quite close up to the boat - there were six of them spotted on 23rd October 2007. None have been spotted so far this year but it is early yet.

• Minke whales were seen on many of our summer trips in 2006 - we were lucky enough to see whales on about 40% of our trips in June/July/August. It was amazing to see them scattering birds as they lunged through shoals of fish - and get close enough to smell their fishy breath! Last year, though, the minkes just weren't around. Dean spotted one at Portsoy on Friday 13th July - but he was on his own at the time so we can't count it!! Some lucky passengers saw one on Saturday 11th August off Gamrie Bay. We're excited to see if the whales will return this summer.

Unusual Sightings:

• On Saturday 11th August we saw an ocean sunfish just off More Head - very exciting! These disc-shaped fish are around 2m long and are the heaviest bony fish in the world! They spend time 'sunbathing' at the surface and we spotted this one waving its pectoral fin out of the water (though it was raining at the time!). These fish do apparently occur in cool waters but we'd certainly never seen one here before!

• Another great wildlife encounter last summer was with a basking shark in Gamrie Bay on Friday 25th August 2008. This huge fish was feeding at the sea surface right by the boat -  it was about 4m long - just a tiddler! Basking sharks get to about 11m! We did see a bigger one a couple of days later - it was close in shore and seemed to follow us into our favourite cove at Head of Garness.

• We saw our first ever otter in Banff - we were walking along Scotstown beach on the evening of Sunday 29th July 2007 and there was one rambling around the rockpools on the shore! Our boat trip had been cancelled that day due to high winds and swell - but we still managed to see some great wildlife!!

• One of the most exciting marine mammal sightings we've had was on 9th September 2006. We met a group of 12 or so Risso's dolphins, which we had never seen before - we had to hit the reference books when we got back to identify them! They are bigger than the bottlenose dolphins, with a large, quite straight dorsal fin and a rounded head. We were with them from Tarlair to Gamrie Bay and were treated to some fabulous displays of breaching and tail lobbing - what an experience!