The Bird
29 August 2017 | Albanian waters
Dierk & Sabrina
The Bird
26 August
After sailing all night from Corfu to Bar in Montenegro, we awoke to see a flock of sea gull type birds hanging around my lure which was trailing about 60m behind the boat. As a general rule they don't often go for it , but this one did.
Down he dives like a German Stuka, grabs the lure in his beak and realises there is a bit of resistance on him. Prior to him getting hooked we shouted and tried to scare him away, but this baby was focussed on a feed. Not the sharpest tool in the shed I suspect.
Anyway, the motion of the boat pulled him under the water so we slowed the boat and came to a stop and we cut the line. Slowly reversing up to him we could not get close enough to catch him. He was understandably skittish and tried to fly away but the line caused too much drag.
The boat came within 10 m of him and could see the hook just caught in his beak. It was quite calm so, Sabrina put the motor in neutral and I jumped in and grabbed the fishing line, swam back to the boat and very carefully pulled him in.
Surprisingly he did not panic and just let me retrieve him. Once aside I gently grabbed his neck so he would not peck me. The hook was easy to dislodge as it was caught on a fleshy part of his upper beak and fortunately had not penetrated through. Very gently we removed it. During this time, he just stared at me with his dark eyes, gave me a bit of a hiss but remained calm. In fact I think he knew I was trying to help him. Accordingly I told him that he was a bit stupid going for that lure that looks nothing like a fish. Ah, light bulb moment....maybe that is why I never catch anything.
It was amazing how light this bird was. With a wingspan of about 1 m, it would not have weighed more than about 300 gm. We launched him into the breeze and off he flew, happy as a lark, or should I say seagull or whatever it was.
See Sean, We did catch something after all.....