Trevor Hardaker – Zest For Birds, ends the 2024 Pelagic Birding season with a dedication that soars…
“I thought I would share a quick overview of the 2024 Zest for Birds pelagic year with everyone. It’s certainly been a very enjoyable year and we would like to thank all of our passengers who joined us this year that made all of this possible.
As a starting point, we managed to get 28 boatloads of birders out to sea this year, but also lost out on 19 trips due to bad weather! We were able to find working trawlers on all of those trips except for one where we could only find a working longliner. But still a very good year where we were able to find fishing boats on every single trip of the year and were not forced to chum for birds on even a single trip!
Over the course of the year, we recorded 49 bird species in total on our trips and a further 10 species of non-avian distractions. Besides the more regular rarities like Northern and Southern Royal Albatrosses, Wandering Albatross, Spectacled Petrel and Red Phalarope which we recorded on multiple trips during the year, we also recorded the locally rare Flesh-footed Shearwater (a very tough bird in the Cape!) and had our best ever season for Southern Fulmars finding them on 10 successive trips throughout the winter period!
Perhaps the weirdest records were a Blacksmith Lapwing and an unidentified Swallow species, both of which were seen flying around at the trawlers on different trips, but the real standout birds of 2024, though, were Tristan and Grey-headed Albatrosses, Grey Petrel, Slender-billed Prion and Red-footed Booby!
Obviously, none of this is possible without the rest of the Zest for Birds team. We have developed a great relationship with Sean Amor from Hooked on Africa Fishing Charters in recent years who handles all the logistics for our trips and he is always willing to go the extra mile for us to ensure that our trips run smoothly. He is also always up for the challenge when I come with last minute requests for additional boats, etc. and nothing is ever a problem. He has even skippered some of our trips himself in the past.
Then I would like to thank, in particular, our main skipper, Grant Scholtz, and my main co-guide, Cliff Dorse, who are integral in making these trips as successful as they are. Because we’ve also had to run numerous days throughout the year with 2 boats at once, I would also like to thank our other skippers, Gerry and Okkie, for the great work they did on board those trips. And, naturally, it is not just Cliff and I that guide on all of these trips, so also a huge thanks to all the other guides that have worked with us this year to ensure that the passengers get a good experience and get to see as many birds as possible during their trips.
Special thanks to Michael Mason, Garret Skead, John Graham, Peter Ryan, Dominic Rollinson, Justin Nicolau and Matthew Orolowitz who all helped out as guides this year, some of them doing numerous trips with us. This was our entire Zest for Birds team for 2024 and the success of our trips is only because of this great team! It is a joint effort to make sure that we consistently find the fishing boats, and then consistently find the good birds as well!
Our loyalty programme has also seen 4 beneficiaries enjoying a free trip because of their support through this year, so a special thanks again to Pieter Scholtz, Alice Moller, Gaynor Donovan and Simon Fogarty. We also have a number of other loyal clients who are edging closer towards their free trip and we look forward to hopefully giving them that opportunity during the course of next year.
Thanks again everyone and, for those that are still wanting to book trips for next year, I will include below the latest status update for next year’s trips.
Looking forward to hopefully welcoming lots of you on board again in 2025…😁 “
