Spring Blitz Day 5 - 24 May 2026 by Kate Sutherland

I think epic is a good word to describe today - we have never had four species of gadfly petrel and two tropicbirds on one of our trips. An excellent and unique day - but as we always say the best days for seabirds are those that are challenging for humans!! And today that was true ;) Brian had an idea about where we might find the birds today and he was 100% right. Seas were big today but certainly not anything we hadn't done before in search of seabirds and definitely not the biggest seas we've been seabirding in but they were a challenge for many (as tends to be the case here offshore from Hatteras!).

It was excellent that the leaders got to split up the sightings with Brent Stephenson spotting the Desertas Petrel first thing then I spotted the Red-billed Tropicbird, Daniel the Cahow (Bermuda Petrel), Ed the first Trindade Petrel then Daniel again for the second one. Off duty leader Sage Church was luckily with us today and spotted the White-tailed Tropicbird on the shelf this afternoon! Today we had Junior Leader Matthew Rice with us for his first trip helping as a spotter and he certainly had his hands full helping people get on the birds! Overall I would say an incredibly successful trip! And I'm a bit exhausted...so a few photos from the day.

Trip report and photos can be found here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/528575

Thanks so much to our leaders today: Brian Patteson, myself, Daniel Irons, Ed Corey, Brent Stephenson and Matthew Rice!

Rarities in Order...

Second dark morph Trindade Petrel by Ed Corey

No photos of the White-tailed Tropicbird!