Swinhoe's Storm Petrel

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Swinhoe's Storm Petrel (Record) | Off Karwar, 30th Sep 2015
A small pelagic seabird that lives offshore and nests on islands. Sightings are often like seeing a black speck flying very fast over the water. This is one of the very few usable images from several long series, taken during a fishery / marine mammal survey as part of a research project I have just begun.

Managed to make record shots of other visiting/vagrant seabirds as well, will share those soon.

Nikon D3100, Nikkor 70-300 ED VR at 300 mm (The equipment I have received for surveys. No, I have not switched brands :) )
SS 1/2000
Av 5.6
ISO 280
Very large crop
Shot in Auto mode with a fixed central focus point. I set the camera to auto mode during surveys as it often has to be used by assistants who may be unfamiliar with the technical details.

Thanks, C&C welcome.
PS - If you would like to help with the surveys, feel free to PM me.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice record photograph. Some more information from Wiki about this bird -

"Swinhoe's storm petrel (Oceanodroma monorhis), also known as Swinhoe's petrel, is a small, all-brown seabird of the storm petrel family Hydrobatidae.

It breeds on islands in the northwest Pacific off China, Japan and Korea. It nests in colonies close to the sea in rock crevices and lays a single white egg. It spends the rest of the year at sea, ranging into the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea.

The common name commemorates the British naturalist Robert Swinhoe."

Thanks for sharing.

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Nice to see this.
TFS
Roopak

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Good to see this. How far off the coast was this sighting?

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Must have been about 11km off. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly where on the track this sighting occurred.