It's always fun to plan some time "up the beach" heading offshore east of Hatteras Island and while the run is a bit longer to get to the deeper water (and this summer the hot, Gulf Stream water!) you never know what you'll find and it's a really fascinating ecosystem with the confluence of two water masses. This sea surface temperature image taken at the end of August illustrates what we mean when we talk about this:
I have starred Oregon Inlet and Hatteras Inlet and you can see how the hot, Gulf Stream waters move offshore of Hatteras Island. This is a unique feature we are so lucky to have here and it is always moving and changing from day to day, minute to minute actually. As you can see Hatteras is closer to the deep water but Oregon Inlet gives us the opportunity to investigate the edge of the Gulf Stream in the summer when our waters to the south are a bit more uniformly warm.
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| Gulf Stream edge with a nice color change © Kate Sutherland |
We were very lucky that the conditions were good and we were able to run all eight of the trips we scheduled from Oregon Inlet, though admittedly some were a bit rough when we had wind against fast moving current (always good for seabirds, though!).
Here are our totals for the set:
As you can see we had a lot of diversity out there! Captain Brian mentioned that these trips in the late summer can rival our early spring trips for the number of species encountered, especially this year when our spring conditions were a bit unusual. One morning we had thirteen species of seabird before we even reached the shelf break! Another morning we tallied ten. Some days we had really nice conditions with organized Sargassum lines, other days we found good feeding activity over yellowfin, blackfin, and skipjack tuna.
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| Cahow (Bermuda Petrel) 21 Aug © Kate Sutherland |
Highlights were two Bermuda Petrels one week apart and one Fea's Petrel that Daniel Irons and I saw briefly plus incredible numbers of Black-capped Petrels on most trips and some really cool behavior we saw them exhibiting like kettling up high, chasing Sooty Terns, and rafted on the water in large groups!
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| Black-capped Petrel checking out the slick © Kate Sutherland |
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| Light form Black-capped Petrel on the water © Kate Sutherland |
We finally found our White-tailed Tropicbirds for the summer and had at least three of them on these trips with two putting on a great show for us on August 24th.
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| White-tailed Tropicbird © Kate Sutherland |
South Polar Skuas were a bit scarce this year but we also didn't really ever have the right wind for them when we had trips...so it was great to have some nice views of them on this set. We always hope to see them when we get big, feeding flocks of shearwaters and tuna so it was a nice set up for encountering the ones that are here. We had at least one juvenile and a few first cycle individuals.
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| South Polar Skua chasing shearwaters © Kate Sutherland |
Shearwaters were around in good numbers and it was great to finally have people excited about Cory's and Scopoli's Shearwaters! We have been separating them for years now and most people were not super excited to learn about the similarities and differences but now that they finally can tick off another species on their list (or in eBird) it is all the rage - you just have to spend a moment on any online platform to see what superstars they have become! We mostly saw Scopoli's but found at least a few Atlantic Cory's on each trip.
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| Scopoli's Shearwater © Amanda Guercio |
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| Atlantic Cory's Shearwater © Amanda Guercio |
Great Shearwaters seemed to be hit or miss. Usually they are around in good numbers this time of year but only a couple of trips found more than 100.
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| Great Shearwater © Amanda Guercio |
Daniel had some teasers rigged without hooks to attract the birds to us along with the chum and fish oil and just about every species checked them out, even the storm-petrels were curious about them, but the ones who "took the bait" most often were Great, Scopoli's or Cory's Shearwaters! We had some extra squid on hand to throw out to them in these cases :) rewarding their hard work!
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| Scopoli's Shearwater with a squid © Kate Sutherland |
Manx Shearwaters made a nice showing up there and we recorded them on all but one trip. Sargasso (aka Audubon's) Shearwaters were around in solid numbers in spite of periods of northerly winds. On 27 August we tallied almost 250.
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| Manx Shearwater on the water © Daniel Irons |
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| Manx Shearwater taking off © Amanda Guercio |
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| Sargasso (Audubon's) Shearwater - ventral © Amanda Guercio |
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| Sargasso (Audubon's) Shearwater over some Sargassum © Daniel Irons |
Wilson's Storm-Petrels also made a solid showing for the summer, a time when they typically begin to thin out, and we had a few late season Band-rumped Storm-Petrels as well, though some were tough for everyone to get on.
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| Band-rumped Storm-Petrel © Kate Sutherland |
It seemed like we had good habitat for phalaropes but we still missed them on a couple of trips, conditions may not have always been perfect for seeing these small ocean going shorebirds! We had a high of 81 Red-necked Phalaropes on 28 August and didn't encounter any Red Phalaropes, a species we can sometimes find in the spring and definitely find out here in the winter!
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| Red-necked Phalaropes © Amanda Guercio |
Typically summer is a good time to see sulids offshore here and while we did find some Brown Boobies Masked Booby was scarce with only one near adult flying by on our last trip up the beach.
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| Immature Brown Booby checking us out © Kate Sutherland |
It was an awesome set for jaegers with all three species putting in appearances and at least one jeager encountered each trip. Though we had the best time with the young Long-taileds who were often on the Sargassum lines feeding and chasing terns! With at least 27 tallied over the eight days they gave us some incredible photo ops, especially on our last couple of trips!
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| Long-tailed Jaeger © Amanda Guercio |
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| Long-tailed Jaeger in flight © Daniel Irons |
South Polar Skuas have been a bit scarce here this year, as I mentioned, but it's likely due to the conditions...we had persistent westerlies this spring and the shearwaters were not here like they usually are...so it was nice to have three to five individuals on our first day out and a couple more trips that encountered them! Some were also curious about our teasers and came quite close to peer at them.
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| South Polar Skua behind the Stormy Petrel II © Kate Sutherland |
It was awesome to see the Sooty Terns out there, as always, with their loud youngsters learning the ropes at sea! They are definitely birds that indicate summer to us here and our final trip we tallied over 300. We had a great time watching them feeding on flying fish with the shearwaters as they were chased from below the surface by small tuna. These scenes of life offshore just never get old!!
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| Sooty Tern and Skipjack Tuna © Kate Sutherland |
As we always mention to people on our trips, Sooty Terns do spend time sitting on the sea...not just flying nonstop for years as is sometimes reported. We encountered a number of individuals doing this on these trips including adults feeding young birds on the water!
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| Three Sooty Terns taking off © Kate Sutherland |
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| Adult Sooty Tern © Daniel Irons |
Bridled Terns were not out there in great numbers, they always seem more scarce than Sooty Terns in the summer, but we saw them on five of the eight trips with really great views on the 29 August trip. They also have their youngsters in tow and it's always fun to bird by ear with these tropical terns - the young Bridleds have a call like blowing across the top of a glass bottle!
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| Perched Bridled Tern © Kate Sutherland |
Also of note was a flock of 39 Hudsonian Godwits on 24 August and four Roseate Terns out there on 29 August. We encountered a number of other terns and gulls, plus a few passerines and a Great Blue Heron - all to be expected as we move from late summer into the fall!
As you can see from the species list we also had some nice cetacean sightings with good views of Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins, Pilot Whales (likely Short-finned), and even some Goosebeaks (aka Cuvier's Beaked Whales).
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| Goosebeaked Whale © Kate Sutherland |
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| Pilot Whales (likely Short-finned) © Kate Sutherland |
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| Common (Offshore) Bottlenose Dolphin © Kate Sutherland |
27 August we found three or four Leatherback Turtles that made a nice showing
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| Close Leatherback Turtle! © Daniel Irons |
and we had some awesome looks at Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) on a couple of the trips!
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| Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) © Kate Sutherland |
Leader Daniel Irons has been honing his offshore fishing skills over the past few years and he was able to keep us fed for some time with good catches of Mahi mahi (Atlantic Dolphinfish), some Blackfin and Yellowfin Tuna!
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| A tiny Bluefin Tuna! We released it to keep growing! © Kate Sutherland |
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A Mahi mahi (Atlantic Dolphinfish) leaping behind a Cory's type Shearwater!
© Kate Sutherland |
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Tiny squid species spit out by one of the Mahi we harvested!!
© Kate Sutherland |
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Daniel with the first yellowfin tuna he caught on this set
© Kate Sutherland |
It was a great set with participants driven to get offshore, excited about what's out there, and leaders we couldn't operate without!! This set our leaders included: Daniel Irons and Amanda Guercio who both were on all eight trips, Ed Corey, Doug Gochfeld, and Andrew Thornton. Daniel and Amanda also were kind enough to supply some photos for me to use here! As always our intrepid Captain Brian Patteson was on every trip up the beach. I was only able to make six due to some work (offshore, of course!) for Duke Marine Lab out at "The Point!"
Thanks so much for reading and checking out our photos!
We headed home on the 30th and ran a trip from Hatteras on 1 September, you can check out the eBird Trip Report here:
~ Kate Sutherland
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