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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Bottle-nosed Dolphin? (1 Viewer)

L

Lawts

Supa Silly Un
No pic. unfortunately but two large dolphins accompanied the Scillonian about 1 - 2 miles out of Penzance. Much bigger than the Common Dolphins I'd seen the day before on Scilly.

Not much else I can say - they briefly followed alongside the ship - fast - the curved fin broke the water - probably about five foot long at a very rough estimate.
 
Lawts said:
Not much else I can say - they briefly followed alongside the ship - fast - the curved fin broke the water - probably about five foot long at a very rough estimate.
Click to expand...

My field guide has the male Bottle nosed Dolphin at 8 foot-twelve and a half foot and the female at seven and a half foot to twelve foot,

On that basis your 5 foot long seems a little on the short side for a Bottle Nosed.
 
Lawts said:
No pic. unfortunately but two large dolphins accompanied the Scillonian about 1 - 2 miles out of Penzance. Much bigger than the Common Dolphins I'd seen the day before on Scilly.

Not much else I can say - they briefly followed alongside the ship - fast - the curved fin broke the water - probably about five foot long at a very rough estimate.
Click to expand...

were they uniformly grey and flipperlike? are you familiar with harbour porpoises?
 
Sounds to me as if the absolute size estimate is way out (its the thing most birders have difficulty with, especially with unfamiliar species). Comparative size is easier so when the guy says bigger than Common Dolphin I believe him.

There have been Bottlenoses specifically roaming between Penzance and Mousehole this summer so its fairly likely that's what they were.

John
 
We saw a group of 8 Bottle-nosed Dolphins off Mousehole ( and 3 earlier near Penzance harbour ) on 21st June, and presumeably this group has been touring the Cornish coast for some time..... If you had only just seen Common Dolphins and they were fresh in your memory, I would say they were highly likely to be Bottle-nosed.
 
Farnboro John said:
Sounds to me as if the absolute size estimate is way out (its the thing most birders have difficulty with, especially with unfamiliar species). Comparative size is easier so when the guy says bigger than Common Dolphin I believe him.

There have been Bottlenoses specifically roaming between Penzance and Mousehole this summer so its fairly likely that's what they were.

John
Click to expand...

I think I was under estimating size on the very brief views. I suppose it's natural to do this rather than over estimate. Much bigger than Common Dolphin - longer and broader.
 
Fantastic view of at least two (never more than two at once) Bottle-nosed Dolphins at Black Rock Sands, in north Wales last Friday. At one point they were ony about 60 metres offshore and were in view off and on for 25 minutes.

Awesome!

Robin
 
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