Monday 2 June 2025

And such a finale for our Spring Blitz that was plagued by bizarre weather patterns and off timing for our usually dependable seabirds of the spring! We weathered out four days during this set: May 21, 26, 28 and 31st. But today we ended it with the spectacular species that kicked it all off on May 22 - Bermuda Petrel or Cahow!! And almost at the same time! I never would have imagined it possible that we would find another Bermuda Petrel this spring - it brings the total to six for the spring (May 20, 22, and 2 June) and five for the two participants who joined us for all of the Blitz trips this spring: Kenneth Kelly and Stephen Davies. Here we are (left to right: Stephen, Kate, Daniel, Ken, Brian) with the Bermuda flag we fly after seeing a Cahow:

This gadfly petrel was in a group of Black-capped Petrels and Daniel spotted it coming in on the port bow just before 09:00 (about the time we had the four individuals on 22 May!! but a different location, of course!) and it zipped by in the harsh light giving everyone a great view then disappeared not to be relocated or seen again though we spent time trying to see if we could entice it back with some chum!

Diversity other than than was a bit low, but just after noontime some Mesoplodons surfaced just off the port bow again! Same place they popped up yesterday! These were presumed to be Gervais' Beaked Whales (Mesoplodon europaeus), the species we typically see out here, but there was one male in the group and he had quite a large arch and tooth not quite as large as Mesoplodon densirostris (Dense Beaked Whale or Blainville's Beaked Whale) but much larger than we have even seen in M. europaeus. You can see it in the photos below. This animal was much more heavily scarred than we have ever seen. Anyhow - an exciting find and really great conditions for photographing them! We saw them around this location last year on 23 May.

You can read the eBird trip report here: 2 June 2025 - there are photos of the Cahow since I failed to get any! 

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us out there for the Blitz! Our next trips are the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (5, 6, 7 June) and we have space on all of them! Thank you also to Todd McGrath and Liam Waters for helping Brian, Daniel and me lead the trip today! All photos are © Kate Sutherland for this report except for the Bermuda Petrel that was kindly given to me by Todd McGrath 🙂 please see below:

Gervais' Beaked Whales (Mesoplodon europaeus)!

Here is the male showing the arched lower jaw and teeth at the top followed by two images of the back.

And a female showing the beak followed by images of the face and back.

Dark-faced Black-capped Petrel

Bridled Tern checking us out!

We finally had some Great Shearwaters show well today!

Wilson's were seen in higher numbers than yesterday but still not as many as we had earlier in the season!

And it's been a few days since we've seen the Portuguese Man of War, but we had a few out there today!

Sunday 1 June 2025

Today was a gorgeous day offshore, though this morning the sea still held a bit of swell from the wind yesterday and last night. While diversity was a bit low, we found really great numbers of Sargasso Shearwaters out there past the shelf break! They were definitely the seabird highlight today with the highest number of individuals out there, we counted 170. Black-capped Petrels came in second with 52 individuals tallied and we were delighted to see some Bridled Terns! A highlight for me was seeing our first pod of Gervais' Beaked Whales (Mesoplodon europaeus), also known as Gulf Stream Beaked Whale or Antillean Beaked Whale, of the spring! There were at least six, possibly seven individuals in the group including at least one calf that looked like it was born this year. They are about seven feet at birth and this one was a bit larger than that but still quite small in comparison with the other individuals in the pod. 

eBird Trip Report can be found here: 1 June 2025

Thanks to everyone who joined us out there today and a big thank you to our guest leaders Todd McGrath, Chris Sloan, and Liam Waters who helped Brian, Daniel & me lead the trip!

Of course here are some of the Mesoplodon europaeus!

And some of the cute, little Sargasso Shearwaters

And one of our Bridled Terns

We also passed our weather buoy this afternoon on the way in!

Friday 30 May 2025

It was a great day out there today with some wind, squalls, and nice flying seabirds! We started the day adding another species to the list for the spring with a young Masked Booby! While the light was challenging, most everyone on board was able to see this large sulid circling over the feeding shearwaters and diving. We had great views of just about everything we saw though views of Bridled Tern, Arctic Tern and Red-necked Phalarope were brief. A light morph Trindade Petrel flew by very frustratingly in the distance and didn't even pause over our slick. Otherwise birds gave some great views especially the Leach's and Band-rumped Storm-Petrels we saw. We did have a billfish come check out our teasers behind the boat but we didn't hook it. It was probably a White Marlin, very cool to see!

For more of the species we had out there today check out our eBird Trip Report: 30 May 2025

A big thank you to Liam Waters for helping Brian, Daniel & me lead the trip today. And thanks to everyone who joined us out there! A few photos © Kate Sutherland

Black-capped Petrels - always the stars!

What looked like one of our "little" Band-rumpeds, but in primary molt!

Token (record shot) of the Masked Booby

And finally a gorgeous Wilson's Storm-Petrel capture!

Thursday 29 May 2025

It was a nice day out there today with not too much wind...so birds were sitting around and it was challenging to recruit them to the chum! But overall we had most of the species we hoped to see and had good views of them. Arctic Terns were a highlight with eight seen over the course of the day, some first summer birds and some adults! We also counted at least 32 Portuguese Man of Wars today and had our first Pilot Whales of the season.

The eBird trip report can be found here: 29 May 2025

Thank you to Andrew Thornton for helping Brian, Daniel and me lead the trip! And thanks to everyone who joined us out there! All photos today © Kate Sutherland

A couple of images of one of our Arctic Terns in the slick just after going down for some chum!

Light form Black-capped Petrel that we found on the water

Cory's Shearwater

Great Shearwater in the slick

And we must include a Wilson's Storm-Petrel!!

One of the Scalloped / Carolina Hammerhead sharks we saw in the afternoon

And of course a couple of the many Portuguese Man of Wars we saw today!

Tuesday 27 May 2025

Well it seems the weather is going to be challenging this spring! Westerlies and then weather! But we made up for it all today with 15 pelagic species including a few new ones for the spring: Trindade Petrel, South Polar Skua, and Great Shearwater all made their first appearances! Winds were from the east for the most part all day and we had a nice low ceiling as well for most of the day...all good things for us to see some diversity out there and it worked! We'll take it since we have to weather out tomorrow (28 May) as well. All three species of storm-petrel showed well with really solid numbers of Wilson's and some great views of Leach's and both molting and non-molting Band-rumpeds. In addition to the South Polar Skuas we also saw one Pomarine Jaeger and two Long-taileds on the shelf in the afternoon. Six species of shearwater were seen over the course of the day as well: Cory's, Scopoli's, Great, Sooty, Manx, Sargasso! To gadfly petrels, of course, Black-capped & Trindade. And to round it out we had some Red-necked Phalaropes on our way back in this afternoon! We'll give you another update on Thursday when we can make it back offshore. Thanks to everyone who joined us today and a big thank you to Ed Corey for helping us lead the trip! - Kate Sutherland (all photos here today are mine also 💙)

Here is the link to the eBird trip report for the day 27 May 2025

I missed the Trindade Petrel since my hands were in gloves getting a fresh chum block ready to deploy, but when I have one I will include it here!

First South Polar Skuas of the season - earlier individual with Hatteras Village in the background!

Black-capped Petrels

We saw some crazy light blue water just over the shelf break with shearwaters and a few Black-capped Petrels over it - it was hard to tell what was going on but there were a number of little baitfish there as well. Brian said there was nothing in the bathymetry that looked interesting, but maybe some upwelling of some sort?

The shearwaters, in the order mentioned above!

Leach's feeding on the chum

Non molting and molting Band-rumpeds (presumed Grant's type for the molting individual)

And a selection of the always photogenic Wilson's Storm-Petrels!!

And my new favorite image of a Wilson's that I've taken!!

We did see another Ocean Sunfish today (Mola mola) and this one was a bit more cooperative than the one we had on the last trip!