Seabird Paradise

St. Paul Island is a dream-like place for Japanese birdwatchers because seabirds photos' captions in famous Japanese bird guidebooks all say that pictures were taken from the island. And indeed, we could see the close up, beautiful breeding plumage puffins and auklets just like the guidebook photos.



一番人気はやっぱりツノメドリ。まつ毛エクステのおかげで目がV字に見える。うしろはウミオウム。



Although the Horned puffin looks very similar to its Atlantic cousin, I realised that horned is much bigger, in fact six to eight cm difference in total length and whopping 230 gram difference in weight.



セントポール島には、メインの海鳥観察ポイントが２カ所あり、毎夕のようにどちらかを訪れて夕方8時過ぎまで観察した。夕方の時間が一番、海鳥が崖に集まっている時間のようだ。





Tufted Puffin is even bigger!



Tufted puffin and the common murre or guillemot.  Why on earth even the bird names are different in American English from British English!  



コロニーでは一番数が少なく、よく探す必要があったエトロフウミスズメ。