Experiences

For Saga guest Jeremy Denton his first ever cruise turned out to be a first in more ways than one...

He and his wife were cruising the fjords of Norway and exploring Iceland on board Spirit of Adventure. For Jeremy, a particular pleasure was time spent on his balcony, new camera in hand, indulging his twin passions for photography and wildlife. “I was enjoying the challenge of trying to capture the birds in flight and so was chuffed when I managed to get a picture of what I thought at first was a gannet, but somehow it didn’t look right.”

Jeremy took the photo to the bar, where someone mentioned the bird had actually landed on their balcony. By now, its arrival had got everyone aflutter. Further investigations, along with the expertise of other guests and the ORCA wildlife team on board, led to the suggestion the bird might be a brown booby, distant cousin of the gannet and part of the same genus as the blue-footed booby of Galápagos fame. If so, then this little fella – quickly nicknamed Brian—was a long way from home. Stories of these birds landing on ships aren’t unheard of, indeed it’s possible the English name booby is derived from the Spanish slang term ‘bobo’ meaning stupid as these tame birds had a habit of landing on board ships where they were quickly eaten. Luckily, the excellent cuisine on board Adventure guaranteed no-one had gone hungry, so this specimen was safe from being snacked-on!

Back in the UK, Jeremy decided to investigate more, and it was the RSPB who advised him to contact their equivalent in Iceland telling him that while this tropical visitor has been sighted in Europe and the UK once or twice in recent years, “it's still a very rare bird to see and one up in Iceland may well be the most northerly record ever.” And so it proves to be the case. SAGA was able to confirm “Ship’s Position at 10:37 UTC | | Lat: 62°55.864’N; Long: 018°28.973’ W | South of Iceland Coast, 32.5 Nm (Port Side) from “VIK Village”. Yann Kolbeinsson of Birding Iceland declared it the northernmost recording of a brown booby and a first for Iceland, “This is indeed wonderful… What an unexpected addition to the Icelandic list!”

Jeremy jokes that he’s waiting for his medal, “it’s like having a world first, no-one else has done this”, but admits he was chuffed to be the only one to get a photo of the bird on the wing.

And whilst his sighting may have excited twitchers and birdwatchers, the sad fact is that Brian was way off-course and exhausted by battling strong winds. Probably a juvenile bird, one theory is he may have misguidedly hitched up in the Caribbean with northern gannets and migrated back to Greenland and Iceland with them. Another theory says climate change is part of the problem, the RSPB told Jeremy, “As the seas warm the theory is that tropical bird species are following the fish shoals north and so there may be further records of brown booby and other exotic seabirds in the future.”

We don’t know what happened to Brian, nobody witnessed him take off, but there aren't many people who can say they've seen a brown booby, let alone in Iceland!