Todd and I definitely made the most of our trip to California. On our quest to find a few lifers for me, we also came across other birds and sea life. Here are a few follow up photos including these California Sealions on the Monterey Jetty.
California Sealion
And plenty of Humpback Whales. Here is a photo of Pink-footed Shearwater and a whale together.
Pink-footed Shearwater and Humpback Whale
I've seen plenty of Humpback whales but this is the best "fluke" photo that I've ever had. This photo is not cropped. That is how close the whale was to the boat!
Humpback Whale Fluke
Remember, the boat is not allowed to chase the whale. We need to stop at some distance away. This one came really close. Very exciting. We also saw Risso's Dolphins on the trip. You can identify them at a distance because their heads look white. These guys came right at the boat and I was able to snap this shot. He looks like he's smiling for the camera!
Risso's Dolphin
Back on land, we spent time just driving the roads along the coast, cattle fields and canyons looking for birds. Todd spotted a MacGillivray's warbler but I missed it. They are skulkers and hard to see. Todd is really good at understanding suitable habitat for birds and calling them out by "pishing". I used that information on another day and got to see this MacGillivray's warbler along another road. Ta-da!
MacGillivray's Warbler
Another sweet warbler that we found along the canyon roads was Wilson's warbler. You can easily identify these warblers by the black "yamaka" that they wear on their head.
WIlson's Warbler
Anna's hummingbirds are common in California. We rarely stopped along the road and didn't see one. Here is a young male perched. You can see his throat patch coming in like a teenaged boy trying to grow a goatee.
Anna's Hummingbird
Back along the coast, we stopped at a beach for a walk. We were treated to this harbor seal basking on the rocks. Look at the waves splashing behind her.
Harbor Seal
We were also able to photograph some beach birds. Black Oystercatchers are the common species on the Pacific coast. Like our Oystercatcher, they have that bright orange bill and flesh toned legs.
Black Oystercatcher
Heerman'g gulls are some of my favorite. I love their muted gray tones. This one is ready to take flight.
Heerman's Gull
This crab was almost lunch for a Western Gull but the bird dropped the crab when he saw us walking up the beach. We snapped a photo before returning the crab to the water.
Purple Shore Crab
All-in-all, a great trip to northern California coast.
Out to see again on Saturday night headed to the blue Gulf Stream waters in search of birds. Calm seas and calm winds were a mixed blessing for birding. As you can imagine, the calm seas are good for the birders but the calm winds are not great for sea birds. Pelagic birds like petrels depend on the wind to whirl around the seas.
We lucked out with Black-capped Petrels on the trip. We saw at least two. Both were sitting on the water and also lazily flying around the boat. This is a master flyer. You can pick it out by the clean black cap (hence the name).
Black-capped Petrel
I've never seen one sitting on the water before. Incredible.
Black-capped Petrel
The bird flew pretty close to the boat.
Black-capped Petrel
Black-capped Petrel
We saw plenty of other birds including many Great Shearwaters. Notice the difference between this bird and the Petrel above. The cap on the Shearwater is much bigger.
Greater Shearwater
Here is one of them taking a bath.
Greater Shearwater
We also saw 3 species of whales including these Pilot Whales.
Pilot Whales
And this Hammerhead Shark cruising the surface. Yikes.
Hammerhead Shark
But the best show of the day was watching the Spotted Dolphins. These guys were amazing. We first saw them in the distance but they were hard to miss. They were jumping so far out of the water. Check out this photos. I drew an arrow from the launch site to show you how far out of the water this dolphin flew.
Here they are a little closer to the boat. 3 in the air at a time.
Look how happy this guy looks flying through the air.
Here they are playing in the wake of the boat. There were a dozen of them bouncing around. Fun stuff.
We missed the main target bird. A few people saw one of the White-faced Stormpetrel but all I saw was a bird zip through my binoculars and disappear into the vast sea. Sigh. Still a good trip.
Once again, I answered the call of the sea and spent the Memorial Day weekend off the coast of North Carolina watching birds - and dolphins and whales. I have been hoping to go offshore in North Carolina for a long time. The reason is that there are different birds seen there including Petrels. Four species can be seen however, we only saw 2 (Black-capped and Herald) but it was worth the trip.
Some of the sights included flocks of Wilson's Storm Petrels running across the water's surface picking up suet chunks that we use to draw them close to the boat.
And these Shearwaters. Great Shearwater here.
Great Shearwater
It rained off and on. Here is the Great Shearwater paddling around in a sun shower.
Great Shearwater in the rain
We saw 2 Sooty Shearwaters too. They are less common and really pretty birds. This one found a piece of suet to eat.
Sooty Shearwater
He flew past the boat a few times showing off his handsomeness.
Sooty Shearwater
Cory's Shearwaters were the most numerous. 2 of them seen here with a Wilson's Storm Petrel.
Cory's Shearwaters
Birds weren't the only highlight. We also had great views of Pilot Whales. You can identify them by the big round head.
Pilot Whale
You can see how close they were to the boat in this photo.
Marty and Pilot Whales
A special interaction with Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins when a few of them played in front of the boat. Here is a shot of Marty and Mike on the front of the boat. Luckily, the waves were calmer at this point.
Marty, Mike and Dolphin
Here is a video of them. I hung over the front of the boat and filmed this scene with my iPhone. Notice the bright blue water - this is the Gulf Stream. You can also see a Remora sucker fish hanging on the Dolphin.
More stories next which also include non avian animals.
I went out on another pelagic birding trip yesterday with SeeLife Paulagics in hopes of seeing some offshore birds. We left Wildwood Crest aboard the Atlantic Star at 10 PM Sunday night and made it 100 miles offshore to the edge of the continental shelf by 4 AM. The seas were calm, the sky was bright blue and the temperature was perfect.
We were greeted by Leach's, Band-rumped and Wilson's Stormpetrels in the early morning. These are little birds that can smell fish guts and shark liver oil from miles away (that's what we use as chum). Here is Band-rumped in flight.
Band-rumped Stormpetrel
Here is the Band-rumped picking at the chum.
Band-rumped Stormpetrel
This is Wilson's. I know, it looks exactly like the Band-rumped. The only way that I can tell the two apart is by the way the Wilson's feet drag out behind the tail when they fly. This is because their legs are a little bit longer than the Band-rumped. Who ever figured that out?
Wilson's Stormpetrel
Here is the Wilson's with a tasty morsel of shark liver. He actually looks happy. Yuck.
Wilson's Stormpetrel with chum
We were all hoping for another type of Stormpetrel called White-faced but we didn't see one all day. We did have a few unexpected sightings but not the avian type. These were the cretaceous type. The trip leaders saw a whale blow in the distance so we headed over to get closer. Even at a distance, the leaders knew what type of whale it was. They could tell by the blow. Notice that the spray isn't going straight up but it is shooting out to the left (away from the camera). That indicates Sperm Whale. Point of interest - Right Whales are named "Right" because they blow to the right.
Sperm Whale blow
Sperm Whales eat giant squid that they find at the bottom of the sea. We were in 6000 feet of water. This fellow took a deep breath and headed down just as we approached. You can tell that they are going deep when you see the giant fluke rise up into the air like this.
One Sperm Whale sighting is amazing but as we turned our attention to the other side of the boat, we saw 6 more whales blowing to the left. Wow. We were actually in the midst of a pod of females and calves! I tried video where you can see 2 whales diving.
I know, I know - "whoooaaa". I wanted to provide commentary but when they dove, all I could say is whoooaaaa.
Whales weren't the only mammal surprise. We also encountered 2 pods of dolphins that are rare for the area. These are called Pantropic Spotted Dolphins and are usually found much farther south than Jersey. Boy did they put on a show. No video, but I got some pretty good photos. They really like to jump out of the water.
Pantropic Spotted Dolphins
They also like to play in the wake of the boat.
Jumping the wake!
They got so close to the boat that you could see the spots that give them their name. You can also see that they are pink too.
Pink and spotty
This one got so close that you can see his exhale bubble trail underwater.
Exhale
And then immediately inhale when the blow hole broke the surface of the water.
Inhale
The dolphin and whale show would have made the trip for me. We could have gone back to the dock at this point which we kind of started to do. After all, it takes 6 hours to get out here and 6 hours to get back to Wildwood. On our way back, we found some more good birds like Cory's Shearwater. We probably saw 20 or so. This guy flew by pretty close.
Cory's Shearwater
Here is another Cory's (right, back) sitting with a Great Shearwater (left, front).
Greater and Cory's Shearwaters
This Audubon's Shearwater also put on a show close to the boat.
Audubon's Shearwater
Once again, I realize that they all look alike at first. Here is a bird that stood out from the others. This is Pomarine Jaeger in mid molt which makes him look more like a vulture. Ugly.
Pomarine Jaeger
Another bird that is still weird to see 60 miles offshore is this Red-necked Phalarope. These are shorbirds that make their living at sea. It is still hard to believe even though we see them regularly.
Red-necked Phalarope
What made this sighting even more odd is that this bird was eating a moth. How does a moth get 60 miles offshore only to be eaten by a shorebird?
Yummy, salty moth
The day was really great. Made it back to Rydal by 7 PM sun kissed, salty and pooped!
The whole reason for our California trip was to go out on a 4 day pelagic birding trip - out into the Pacific ocean to find west coast sea birds. The trip was an opportunity to see some birds that we don't get in the Atlantic ocean. The boat is a 95 foot fishing and natural history cruiser called the Searcher. Paul and Anita talked it up last year and we got 13 east coasters to sign up. That made the trip even better. This is not an ordinary pelagic trip where you sleep on the deck and bring your own Wawa hoagies. This boat has cabins and a chef! Barbara and I got a cabin together with bunk beds and room for our bags. Unfortunately for Barbara, our cabin was right next to the diesel engine which roared along all day and night.
As for the birds and sea life, we saw it all including whales, dolphins, sharks, sea lions and lots of birds. We headed out of San Diego port on Monday afternoon and immediately saw sea lions and birds along the docks and rocks of Point Loma.
We hit the big stuff right away with whales. The 2 largest whales in the ocean showed up on our first day. First was a Blue Whale. This is the largest being to ever live on earth - reaching lengths of 90 feet. Look at the nostrils on this beast.
Blue Whale
The second longest whale in the world is the Fin Whale. Seen here just after it dove under our boat! Zoom in to see the parasites hanging off of it.
Fin Whale
Common birds followed the boat including this Western Gull who I caught looking for chum in our wake.
Western Gull
And this Elegant Tern followed us for a long time but turned back once we got far from land.
Elegant Tern
But these are not the birds that we came out for. We were more interested in Shearwaters like this Pink-footed Shearwater.
Pink-footed Shearwater
Named for their pink feet but frankly, alot of birds have pink feet. You can see the feet in this photo. Many of the sea birds take flight by running across the water to get enough speed to lift off.
"Pinky"
Other birds that most of the participants wanted to see were Craveri's Murrelets. A murrelet is an alcid which is related to Puffins. They are diving birds that remind you of Peguins only they can fly (which penguins can't do). Craveri's are another one of those birds that was just created by a split. They used to be Xantu's Murrelets until they split into 3 species. They are like little flying softballs. Try finding one of these in the vast Pacific ocean! Well, we found about a dozen of them over the course of the trip.
Craveri's Murrelets
Craveri's Murrelets
Of course, whales aren't the only creatures in the sea. There are also (gulp) sharks. This Hammerhead Shark was cruising along the surface right next to the boat. You can barely make out the hammerhead shape under water.
Hammerhead Shark
This flying fish actually flew for a long distance before diving back underwater. It was amazing to see this fish in action. Even more amazing that I actually got a photo.
Flying Fish
One of the birds that I can never get enough of is Northern Fulmar. We have these in the Atlantic too but we rarely see them. This guy almost got run over by the boat. He is in heavy molt and missing many feathers which makes it difficult to fly. Check out the feather shafts sticking out of his backside. These are new feathers that haven't unfurled yet.
Northern Fulmar
There is much more to tell you and more photos of amazing sea life and sea birds. Stay tuned.
