Bottlenose dolphins, Cardigan Bay

Just for a change I varied my route home from Swansea today and went via New Quay and Cardigan Bay. It's a beautiful route and when you've got most of the day to get home the extra hour's driving seems insignificant when compared to the nightmare of the M4/M5/M6. 

I always try to stop off somewhere to have a look for the bottle-nosed dolphins which frequent the bay, apparently the largest UK population. When I arrived at New Quay there was a dolphin watching boat about to go out with a few available spaces, so for £15 it seemed a good way to spend an hour and get close up to the dolphins, and so it proved. Probably the best dolphin watching trip I've ever been on in the UK and certainly better than spending the hour queuing on the M6 at Birmingham where the only thing I'd get close up to would have been the bumper of the lorry in front.

Even before we got on the boat I'd spotted a couple of dolphins from the jetty, a mother and calf. We saw these very well during the trip and I suspect that most of my photos are of this couple, but there were also at least three other bottlenose dolphins in the area as well and these also came quite close.

Note the markings on the dorsal fin and compare with some of the other photos and you can clearly see that there are at least two animals in the photos. I think that this is the mother, it's certainly not the calf, but it may have been one of the other adults that was nearby.

These are actually the best views I've ever had of bottlenose dolphin, at one point they were bow-riding for about five minutes. I remember once watching white-beaked dolphins bow-riding in front of the Good Shepherd III on our way to Fair Isle way back in 1986, but this is the first time I've experienced bottlenose dolphins behaving in this way. I think I've neglected this species over the years and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to see them well today. 

It's a bit hard to tell from this photo but from the markings on the dorsal fin it doesn't appear to be the same as the animal further up the post.

Looking at the markings on this dorsal fin it's obviously different to both those higher up the post. The fin is also less long and more rounded on the top. I suspect that this is the calf.

This dorsal fin looks the same shape as the previous which makes me think that it's the same animal and therefore probably also the calf.

There were at least two or three Mediterranean gulls flying around, this is a 1st summer, but apart from these and a few gannets it was very quiet birdwise.

New Quay.