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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edward" data-source="post: 208547" data-attributes="member: 822">Thanks for the replies Katy, Tom, and Harry,As for chumming Katy, we just didn't know how much we needed and reports had varied wildly. I think I read on BF that the Scillonian pelagic in Cornwall took 1,300 litres of chum with it!! but one of the trip members last week went on a South African pelagic this year and they only had a small bucket full. What we did was tell the captain to keep any spare fish he couldn't sell the week before we went. He came up with about 75 kg of capelin and about 25 kg of larger fish. We mashed some of the the capelin, mixed it with cod liver oil and and a minute drop of DMS and put it in a gauze bag. The captain of the ship already had such a bag for some reason. Basically it let out the smell of the mix and perhaps a tiny bit of the mashed material but the holes were too small to let much solid material out. The birds followed it immediately though and we threw out a lot of whole capelin to give them something to eat. Next time I'd like to cut a few holes in the bag so it empties itself and then replace its contents regularly. Capelin was an excellent fish to use, oily and small enough for Fulmars and Kittiwakes to manage with whole. Gannets had no interest in the capelin only the larger fish. The golden rule about not stopping I'd read about somewhere. I remember Blue Whale watching off western Iceland two years ago. Everything was fine until the boat stopped and then the seasickness hit almost everyone! The only cetaceans we saw on this trip were Harbour Porpoises and that was, as usual, a very brief sighting. We did see Minke Whales on both ferry journeys to and from the mainland though and I saw a couple of White-beaked Dolphins from land yesterday too.As for finding more birds next time, then I'm sure you're right, Tom and Harry. It's a real question of finding which areas have the best potential and we'll just have to keep trying. If anything we didn't go far enough out this time. We know Great Shearwaters do occur but they have only been seen by two birders here, one who was a fisherman for many years and the other is a scientist who goes on trips on a research ship and has seen them far out to sea. Cory's Shearwater has been claimed but never accepted. There are three accepted records of Black-browed Albatross and one record of Wilson's Petrel. I'm sure the latter must occur more regularly but perhaps we were too late now. And hasn't it also been a poor year for larger shearwaters in the UK and Ireland this year? Basically I think that any pelagic bird which has been seen in UK and Irish waters has the potential to reach Iceland so there's a lot of discovering to do!Pomarine Skuas (my nemesis and major bogey bird) are regular passage migrants but numbers vary and I've never found a good enough spot to guarantee a sighting. Sabine's Gull is treated like a vagrant here but is surely a scarce but under recorded passage migrant.  As for Leach's Petrel it was a real mystery why we saw none (and it's almost never see from land, whereas Storm Petrels are regular from land in July). They lay their eggs in late May I think and so if you go out to the colonies in June you can see them returning in broad daylight in the middle of the "night." I think Gaukur witnessed this last year.E</blockquote>

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