These pictures were taken on 2 boat trips up to 15 miles to the north of Cap Vert, Dakar on 11th and 14th November 2003.
Dakar lies directly on the migration route of diomedea between the Mediterranean and the seas of South Africa. Also borealis is known to wander to the coast of West Africa and Dakar is not that far off the migration route from the islands of Macronesia and the seas of South America.
Although there were still a lot of edwardsii about, we observed a huge increase in the numbers of larger Calonectris on this visit, compared to October, with birds passing at well over 1000 per hour at times. One would assume that the large majority of these are diomedea, and indeed the large majority had at least some white showing in the bases of the primaries, but birds with all black primaries or with minimal white were present too.
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