Day 18.262: Whale-watching life-list birds

I added two birds to my life list on our whale watching trip, although the first one was a technicality.

I had certainly seen and identified northern gannets before - most memorably on a boat trip from a holiday in Brittany in northern France. The boat trip was probably to Sept Iles almost straight out into the English Channel from where we were staying.

Here are a few that we saw on Saturday's boat trip:

Adult

Immature

The second was a solitary brief sighting of a northern fulmar - a tube-nosed seabird that can excrete smelly oil as a defense mechanism (fulmar is a word derived from its foul smell). I only got one half-decent photo, but it was enough to confirm the identification.

This one, as far as I know I have never identified before.