only yesterday I was listening to an ockham's razor podcast about Author and keen birdwatcher Sue Taylor from Melbourne and her quest to sight albatrosses in Australian waters. It was an awesome 12 min podcast talking about the terrible conditions she endured to eventually see a sooty albatross..
it sounded like an exciting trip indeed
here is copy/paste of the end of the transcript
"It is not possible to run on a pitching yacht, but I travelled as fast as my tottering legs allowed and, breaking all the captain´s rules, reached the cockpit without donning my safety harness. I didn´t need binoculars (which is just as well, because while others managed, I found it tantamount to impossible to get binoculars to my eyes, and to focus with one hand, while hanging on with the other, and the object I´m trying to focus on is flying in and out of sight as waves surge and the boat lurches). In any case, I didn´t need binoculars. That magnificent light sooty albatross flew right over my head. For me the trip had been worthwhile. Others, I knew, wanted the spectacle of thousands of prions. But I was sated with my light-mantled sooty.
No-one told me to go below and put on my safety harness, so I didn´t. A little later, I was standing beside our tour leader when he saw a fiordland penguin in the water. I glimpsed a white blob swimming just below the surface and I fancy it had a yellow crest. No twitcher could possibly count such a blur. Our tour leader celebrated loudly. He´d been the only one to see the penguin. We all congratulated him, those of us who´d previously seen fiordland penguins even meant it."
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Date: 2010-07-29 04:05 am (UTC)It was an awesome 12 min podcast talking about the terrible conditions she endured to eventually see a sooty albatross..
it sounded like an exciting trip indeed
here is copy/paste of the end of the transcript
"It is not possible to run on a pitching yacht, but I travelled as fast as my tottering legs allowed and, breaking all the captain´s rules, reached the cockpit without donning my safety harness. I didn´t need binoculars (which is just as well, because while others managed, I found it tantamount to impossible to get binoculars to my eyes, and to focus with one hand, while hanging on with the other, and the object I´m trying to focus on is flying in and out of sight as waves surge and the boat lurches). In any case, I didn´t need binoculars. That magnificent light sooty albatross flew right over my head. For me the trip had been worthwhile. Others, I knew, wanted the spectacle of thousands of prions. But I was sated with my light-mantled sooty.
No-one told me to go below and put on my safety harness, so I didn´t. A little later, I was standing beside our tour leader when he saw a fiordland penguin in the water. I glimpsed a white blob swimming just below the surface and I fancy it had a yellow crest. No twitcher could possibly count such a blur. Our tour leader celebrated loudly. He´d been the only one to see the penguin. We all congratulated him, those of us who´d previously seen fiordland penguins even meant it."