July 11, 2005
Birds and whales of the Farallons
Saturday was a dull day's birding. Marcel and I drove for three hours up to Shasta where we heard a Yellow Rail, decided there was zero chance of seeing it, and drove the three hours back to Davis. Whoop-dee-do. A far more pleasing lifer was this Shasta Alligator Lizard at the entrance to its burrow.
On Sunday we joined the Sacramento Audubon boat trip to the Farallons in the hope of seeing Tufted Puffins. The fog didn't seem so bad as we left Sausalito...
... but when we turned the corner to go under the Golden Gate Bridge it was a different story!
Marcel had kindly lent me his spare SLR camera with 300mm zoom for the day, somewhat easier to use then attempting to digibin from a lurching boat! About an hour away from the shore the fog lifted to reveal two Tufted Puffins which gave glorious views to all on board.
The next highlight was not a bird, but a pod of Risso's Dolphins. This is a deep-water species usually found further south, and judging by the excitement of our guide we were lucky to see them!
The pod came extremely close to the boat, allowing us to see the scarring on their flanks.
The density of birds on the water increased as we approached the Farallons.
The islands themselves were covered by thousands of seabirds, including huge numbers of Common Murres....
... and many Brown Pelicans.
Interestingly, we saw no young birds - breeding has been suspended (perhaps for the entire year) by the unusually warm water temperature this year, which has effectively resulted in no upwelling (and therefore no food). Let's hope this is just a temporary blip!
Around the island we had great views of the other summering alcids (Pigeon Guillemot, Cassin's and Rhinoceros Auklets).
We saw Dall's and Harbor Porpoises, and had great, close-up views of this Gray Whale.
We then headed out to the edge of the deep water canyon in the hope of seeing more pelagic species. After an initially promising start (a few Sooty Shearwaters, Black-footed Albatross (below), Red Phalaropes and an unidentified Storm-Petrel), things got very quiet.
After a couple of hours with nothing more exciting than a lone Northern Fur Seal, we started heading for the shore. We were then fortunate enough to run into a group of maybe 7 very active Humpback Whales, and spent the next hour observing them spy-hopping, lunge-feeding and diving, often within spitting (or spouting?) distance of the boat. Needless to say I took a bunch of pictures - here's a selection of some of the better ones. Hope I can find time to get back out there later this year!
