Spring Blitz Day 7 - 26 May 2026 by Kate Sutherland

Day seven of our Spring Blitz here in Hatteras was another windy day with winds from the south southwest shifting a bit to the southwest over the course of the day. We made it to the shelf break in good time even though running conditions were a bit challenging and it took us awhile to get some birds following in the slick with a Band-rumped Storm-Petrel making some close passes right off the bat! It was only 09:15 when a White-tailed Tropicbird appeared over the bow spotted by leader Ed Corey...at first it seemed like it wasn't going to come in for a close pass, but then it turned and headed right towards us! And yes, it gave us excellent views before disappearing as quickly as it appeared!

Just after this we had great looks at an Arctic Tern and later we also had a more distant Bridled Tern pay us a visit. Overall we had good numbers of Black-capped Petrels and shearwaters continue to increase with more Cory's / Scopoli's out there today and a few more Great Shearwaters starting to show up. Our eBird trip report can be found here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/529894 

Thanks to everyone who joined us out there and thank you to our leaders: Brian Patteson, Daniel Irons, Ed Corey and Sage Church who all worked really hard to make it an awesome day! Here are a few more images from the day and we'll see what we can turn up out there tomorrow...! -Kate

A couple more of the tropicbird

Some Black-capped Petrels

And our loyal Wilson's Stormies