A Brit abroad

Surreal pelagic (revised)

Yesterday Marcel Holyoak and I joined a Debi Shearwater pelagic in Monterey Bay. Being my first Pacific pelagic, I had high hopes for seeing multiple life birds. However, I don't think anyone could have predicted the bizarre mix of birds we were to see. As I write this the room is still spinning from spending 8 hours on a boat, and the combination of a 4am start and sleep-inducing seasickness pills makes me wonder whether it was all a dream...

Good birding started close inshore, with many Elegant Terns, Brown Pelicans, Heerman's Gulls, Common Murres and Pigeon Guillemots being seen (in addition to Sea Otters and Sealions).

Further offshore, we saw the first of many Sooty Shearwaters...

... and a fine adult Pomarine Jaeger (or Skua if you're a Brit).

Chumming from the back of the boat soon attracted a large flock of gulls, as well as three smart life birds: Pink-footed Shearwaters, a few Buller's Shearwaters (surely the most attractive of the shearwaters), and a majestic Black-footed Albatross.

A few hours into the pelagic we hit a lull in seabird activity. However, we were all entertained by the arrival of the first bizarre trip bird, this confiding male Townsend's Warbler. This bird thwarted one of my attempts to photograph it by landing on my hand!

You don't often get Townsend's Warbler and Sooty Shearwater in the same photo!

'Anyone seen the Townsend's?'

The next oddity was a Least Sandpiper, which circled the boat many times looking for a safe spot to land. Shortly afterwards, another small shorebird also circled the boat. It too had a wingbar, but was paler on the back than Least, and too brownish toned to be a Phalarope. What could it be? Several birders armed with video cameras and camcorders got footage of the bird, and after some deliberation the bird's identity was announced as a Lesser Sand (aka Mongolian) Plover! This is a mega-rarity in the US, and many of us eagerly awaited publication of the photos online. Well, it turns out that the identification was a little hasty: Mongolian Plover never shows the extent of white visible on the nape of this bird, and it was ultimately re-identified as a Snowy Plover. Oops! Fortunately, I hadn't got round to updating my bird lists since the pelagic, so I didn't have to un-tick it!

The next couple of hours produced a steady stream of birds including a juv Brown-headed Cowbird, Artic Tern, Parasitic Jaeger, Red-necked Phalaropes, Sabine's Gulls, Fulmar, Cassin's and Rhinoceros Auklet. We then stumbled across a flock of thousands of storm petrels. My first instinct was to panic - pretty much every bird in this flock was going to be a lifer, but there were swarms of them, the sea was choppy, and to my inexperienced eye they all looked the same. Help! I eventually calmed down and decided just to work on the closer birds. I was able to pick out the larger Black Storm-Petrel from the more numerous Ashy, and the single Wilson's Storm Petrel (quite unusual for here) was easy as it was the only white-rumped bird! A small number of Least Storm Petrels were also present, but unfortunately I just didn't get good enough views to identify one. Will be more prepared for them next time!

In addition to seabirds, we saw a variety of other animals, including some huge Mola Molas (Ocean Sunfish), Dall's Porpoises racing the boat, and my first Northern Fur Seal. Surprisingly we didn't run into any Blue Whales, but we did see two Fin Whales (much more unusual).

We also saw Humpback Whales, one of which showed us its fluke as it submerged.

All in all a spectacular, if somewhat exhausting, day. Looking forward to my next pelagic (departing from Bodega) in two weeks' time!

Posted by rjhall at August 30, 2004 2:21 PM