Last week I wrote about the anticipation and excitement of encountering Campbell Albatross while heading south toward Campbell Island. The next anticipated sighting was Light-mantled Albatross. These stunning birds are a delight to watch flying, especially when performing their synchronised courtship flights. I wrote about this after first seeing it on Enderby Island during our 2016 expedition with Heritage. One of my images from that trip is the feature image for Light-mantled Albatross on New Zealand Birds Online and I was looking forward to seeing them again.

On this trip I had plenty of opportunities to watch and photograph Light-mantled Albatross and was able to add some nice images to my archive. I am still in the process of working through all the raw images editing out and deleting the rubbish. I try and discipline myself to get the boring stuff out of the way before processing images but some images just have to be processed as a reward for wading through files. There will be more to come as I make my way through all the files as we had great sightings on Campbell Island and Auckland/Enderby Islands.

Light-mantled Albatross are stunning in their shaded grey/brown plumage with white partial eye-ring and pale blue bill sulcus. When perched they have a slightly surprised comical look that transforms into this graceful aerodynamic shape in flight. They are closely related to the Sooty Albatross (Phoebetria fusca) and are also known as Light-mantled Sooty Albatross but that seems a bit of a mouthful. Sooty Albatross have darker plumage over their back and a yellow/orange bill sulcus. They are vagrants to New Zealand waters.

Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikon 500mm f5.6VR lens.