After a visit to the steppes some weeks ago, Javi Aznar launched a new activity for his master’s students at Universitat de València with a completely different focus. A ship sailing around Columbretes Islands would reach the continental slope in the Mediterranean on the lookout for cetaceans. Navigating the waters of the archipelago’s Natural Reserve is an awesome opportunity in itself, as these islands are seldom visited except by researchers and rangers.
The boat departed from Grau de Castelló at 8:00 amid several yellow-legged gulls (Larus michahellis) and European shags (Gulosus aristotelis). Not too far away, we started to connect with the first Scopoli’s shearwaters (Calonectris diomedea) and the only gannet (Morus bassanus) of the day.
Scopoli’s shearwaters delivered spectacularly close looks for most of the 10 hour boat ride, as they followed our wake and surfed the wash around it.
Despite the boat speed, we noticed numerous by-the-wind sailors (Velella velella) floating on the surface as they do. Both Cory’s and Balearic shearwaters (Puffinus mauretanicus) gathered in small rafts along the journey, feasting on these colonial hydrozoans.
It took about four hours of coping with the sea’s sway until we reached Columbretes. The isolation has shaped a unique community of fauna and flora, featuring numerous endemic species to this volcanic archipelago, named after the former abundance of snakes on the island, now extinct. We sailed around Illa Grossa, the main island, C-shaped due to its volcanic origin.
The sail around Illa Grossa is an experience I will never forget. While scoping Scopoli’s shearwaters flying between the islands, the calls of numerous Eleonora’s falcons (Falco eleonorae) drawed everyone’s attention. Numerous falcons soon showed up flying over the ship past gull flocks.
The more we looked, the more birds we saw — tens of falcons engaged in chasing each other along the island cliffs and into the sea, some eventually flying into small caves or rocks. The species sports two morphs, one pale, similar of that of other falcons or hobbies, and one jet-black. However, pale birds looked all-dark to the naked eye under most light conditions.
The life history of these birds is almost as extraordinary as their looks. Being long-distance migrants, these falcons of the sea reach the Mediterranean in late spring and breed in small offshore islets as Columbretes in colonies. Their breeding and migration timings are shifted towards later in the year so they can benefit from migrant passerines in fall — extremely abundant in the islets they inhabit, which are pitstops for birds during migration over the sea — to raise their offspring. Then they fly up to 9,000 km on a formidable single one-way trip across continental Africa and the Indian Ocean to spend the winter months in the distant tropical rainforests of Madagascar.
The aim of the outing was looking for cetaceans so we soon left the territories of these magnificent birds and sailed towards the end of the continental shelf. As soon as we left Columbretes, two dark-morph parasitic jaegers (Stercorarius parasiticus) chased each other. Several European storm-petrels (Hydrobates pelagicus) were also seen in this area, where the sea was particularly calm.
Several fins called our attention, revealing different ocean sunfish (Mola mola). One of them roamed particularly close to the boat surrounded by several Audouin’s gulls, and allowed us to observe it laterally and upfront as it swam towards us. An oddly shaped pelagic fish which was the star of the show. In the background, we also noticed distant swordfish (Xiphias gladius) jumping off the water.
We soon embarked back to the mainland, on a much calmer sea — in terms of waves and birds. We did not connect with any marine mammals — surprising, considering that this outing is usually productive in these terms, with an earlier edition when an enygmatic Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris) and its calf were connected. However, me and my friends had a blast with all the birds and landscapes sighted.
Some of us chilled in the back of the boat and indulged photographing Scopoli’s and Balearic shearwaters. Besides fantastic photographic opportunities, we worked on finding Cory’s shearwaters (Calonectris borealis) — Scopoli’s Atlantic counterpart — and yelkouan shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan) — Balearic’s Eastern counterpart. Both birds are much scarcer in this region and their identification can be challenging. We called some Cory’s on the spot, while we connected with several potential yelks that could only be confirmed after double-checking pictures. The close-up looks at numerous birds definitely helped.
Other bird species connected out at the sea included black tern (Chlidonias niger), common tern (Sterna hirundo) and some migrating land birds in shape of northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) and barn swallow (Hirundo rustica).
Columbretes have long been a wanted place for me, mostly because of the possibility of sailing the waters around it and connecting with Eleonora’s falcons. The numbers of these and other birds and the beauty of the infinite shades of blue, and the reddish, yellow and green of the islands exceeded my expectations.
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