What do you do when you are on an island like Madeira (Portugal), about 600 km off the coast of Morocco? Then you go for a Whale, dolphin and bird watching excursion by boat with Madeira Wind Birds. Riding the waves, circled by lots of Cory's Shearwaters. Only to encounter a nice group of Common Bottlenose Dolphins (NL: Tuimelaar) (Tursiops truncatus). And several Short-finned Pilot Whales.
Above is just one photo, but there is a bunch of photos on the website: Common Bottlenose Dolphins. And believe me, it's quite hard to shoot any focused photo when the boat is rocking on over 1m high waves and you try to find a surfacing dolphin in your camera viewfinder through a 500mm zoom lens. So I was lucky to get some good photos. The hardest part is predicting where a dolphin will surface and then quickly reacting to that. But I managed in some cases, hence the pictures!
For those who like the biological details:
Click a link and you'll go to the page for that rank in the biological classification on Schaapmans' Wildlife Spotting.
Kingdom: | Animalia | |
Animals | Dierenrijk | |
Phylum: | Chordata | |
Vertebrates | Gewervelden | |
Class: | Mammalia | |
Mammals | Zoogdieren | |
Order: | Cetacea | |
Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises | Walvisachtigen | |
Suborder: | Odontoceti | |
Toothed Whales | Tandwalvissen | |
Superfamily: | Delphinoidea | |
Toothed Whales | Tandwalvissen | |
Family: | Delphinidae | |
Oceanic Dolphins | Dolfijnen | |
Genus: | Tursiops | |
Bottlenose Dolphins | Tuimelaars | |
Species: | Tursiops truncatus | |
Common Bottlenose Dolphin or Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin | Tuimelaar |