Gulf Stream Specialties - 12 September 2026 by Kate Sutherland

We had our first scheduled September trip this weekend and while we had to travel a bit farther to get to the Gulf Stream, all of our expected species were there and we had great views of most of them during our time offshore of the shelf break! Skies were overcast as we headed offshore which always makes for a gorgeous sunrise and everyone was out on deck to watch.

Thunderstorms were moving offshore to our south and we were lucky to have overcast and dark skies somewhere around us all day making for some really impressive photography. People always ask me what my favorite bird is offshore here...and my reply is always "the bird I'm looking at!" just because seabirds are my favorite birds and it's challenging to choose a favorite. But admittedly Pterodroma petrels are some pretty special and amazing seabirds. A number of our participants were seeing them for the first time on this trip and what a time to get to see your first Black-capped Petrel!! We run many trips in the spring when Black-cappeds have just finished nesting and are molting...or really worn looking. But in September they're finished or just finishing and they are incredibly striking birds!

Because they are so regular for us offshore here a lot of our participants take them for granted and don't always look at them when they're around - but they are rare birds and there is still a lot we don't know about them - we honestly don't even know all of their breeding locations. Hispaniola is home to some of these birds and there are dedicated people doing their best to track the birds in Haiti and Dominican Republic from year to year - noting their successes and failures. Black-capped Petrels are on the Endangered Species list here in the US but thanks to our current administration's failure to continue to protect the species on this list with personnel and funding who knows what will become of the work we've been able to accomplish? And believe me, I know there is a long list of species impacted by these changes.

Sargasso Shearwaters are another Gulf Stream specialty that we're glad to show people on our trips! We saw almost 100 of these small black-and-whites even though Sargassum was lacking in the blue water for most of the day. Bridled Terns are another species we hope for around the Sargassum and usually finding some floating mats of the brown algae is the most important feature to find one perched on flotsam - luckily close to the end of our time in the deep we found a really nice current edge / color change that happened to have a Bridled Tern perched on a shoe!

I can't tell you how many times we've seen them on shoes or flip-flops! This individual was super cooperative for us and after we saw that one we found at least eight more along this condition. Sooty Terns also are typically associated with Sargassum though we tend to see them just about anywhere there might be some fish to eat! And we had some nice views of them out in the deep as well. At least two Parasitic Jaegers were seen taking advantage of the Sooty Terns offshore and we had a couple of Long-tailed Jaegers on the trip as well. Red-necked Phalaropes are still around and we had a lot on the shelf as we approached the break in the morning then we had some offshore as well, mostly where we had the nice condition in the afternoon, pictured here with a Goose-beaked Whale surfacing on the nearside.

On that same condition we had a juvenile Brown Booby which according to eBird would be the rarest bird of the day...though arguably Black-capped Petrels are much rarer than Brown Booby!

Thanks so much to everyone who joined us out there today! I'm glad we were able to get out there and see the target species so well. Thanks also to our leaders today - Brian Patteson and Daniel Irons are always on board plus we had Andrew Thornton as our guest leader. Photos today are mine and thanks for reading!! - Kate Sutherland

The eBird Trip Report can be found here: 12 September 2026 Which will give you a list of bird species we saw out there...but we also saw 17 to 20 Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, 33 to 35 Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins, and at least nine Goose-beaked (aka Cuvier's Beaked) Whales in three different encounters!! While we saw mostly the usual flyingfish species there was one large, Atlantic Blackwing Flyingfish that was an offshore hightlight ;)

A few more images from the day!

Black-capped Petrel light form individuals

Another view of the dark individual pictured in the text above

Scopoli's Shearwater

A Cory's / Scopoli's - my feeling on this one is Atlantic Cory's...but there is a bit of white in that outer most under primary. We had a lot of birds on this trip (and last weekend as well) that had more dark in the leading edge of the underwing but had extensive white in the outermost under primaries. Most of the birds we saw today were Scopoli's.

The Bridled Tern that was perched - ventral and dorsal views

Wilson's Storm-Petrel

And of course a few of the Goose-beaked Whales we saw!

This individual in the two photos below had a number of Cookie Cutter Shark scars on it! These are the circular scars in addition to the rakes from teeth of other male Goose-beaked Whales (you can see these teeth in the top photo).

And finally a cloudscape from the morning commute...

Oregon Inlet - We're Glad to Be Here - 27, 28, 29, 30 August 2026 by Kate Sutherland

It seems our new location agrees with us! We had another successful run of trips at the end of the month with 17 pelagic species and ten species of tubenose over four days! Certainly a good set for those who were able to join us for all four trips. 

Tuna are on the move and we had some amazing encounters with different species over the four trips 

plus got to see some awesome "beehives" or feeding flocks of shearwaters with mostly Sooty Terns overhead. The Bridled Terns have finally showed up, as I mentioned in earlier posts, and we encountered young of both species attending their parents in some of these mixed feeding flocks and along productive current edges with Sargassum. 
Summer is such an awesome time to be offshore with all of the young of the year showing up! Most of the Sargasso Shearwaters we saw were nice, fresh juveniles already foraging on the species available in the Sargassum like this Planehead Filefish!

These youngsters in addition to some juvenile Black-capped Petrels always give me hope that our seabird species are going to survive into the future (in spite of some very challenging circumstances). Black-capped Petrels especially have many challenges and though they are listed as an Endangered Species here in the US, funding for programs at their breeding locations has been crippled by our current administration.

Just one of many things humans are doing to contribute to the decline of these gorgeous and resilient birds. As we have learned from the Cahow, aka Bermuda Petrel, they only need a little bit of help from us - they can do the rest themselves. 

In addition to young tubenoses, we also got to see some young jaegers with gorgeous, fresh plumage already beginning their lives of kleptoparasitism! We had young Parasitic Jaegers chasing Sooty Terns and had some Long-tailed Jaegers also chasing storm-petrels.

The Wilson's we're seeing are a mixture of young of the year and adults. Though these youngsters have been alive a bit longer than our northern hemisphere tubenoses, most of whom fledged recently, the first year Wilson's are already molting to begin their journey south and the adults are ready to do so!

Great Shearwater youngsters also showed up earlier in the season with the first young of the year around in June. Now we're seeing some that are a bit messier looking and some adults that are finishing molt and looking stunning.

It's always amazing to me that the Gulf Stream is such a mixing place with birds from all over the globe either coming here or utilizing these waters at right times for them. 

We are super lucky to be so close to the shelf break and this incredible confluence of waters with "the Point" right offshore from Oregon Inlet. The shelf break up here is quite different to what we had in Hatteras with very deep water close to the shelf...in Hatteras we had more of a slope, so the path to the deep water was more gradual. I imagine there is a lot to discover up here and this weekend we had a sighting on Saturday that made us scratch our heads...a rorqual out in the deep. In the hot, fast water of the Gulf Stream. It was super elusive and we didn't have a great look at it - I thought it was going to be a Minke Whale, it had the sort of fast moving, water pushing signature of one but we haven't seen them out in the Gulf Stream and it looked to be a little larger than that. Who knows? Perhaps a Bryde's Whale? We will never know but we'll keep looking and recording everything we find offshore here! We had more Goose-beaked Whales this set and a few unidentified beaked whales that could have been Gervais'. There is a lot of life east of Hatteras Island.

Okay...on to the rarities! We had two Trindade Petrels over the four day set, one distant dark morph on the 27th and another, more cooperative, light morph on the 29th.

Masked Booby was an excellent find on two of our trips the 27th and 30th.

We also had a juvenile Brown Booby on the 28th.

The most epic find came on the 29th when we encountered THREE White-faced Storm-Petrels on the shelf that morning! It was raining a bit as we checked out a condition on the shelf that morning and there were hundreds of Red-necked Phalaropes there. As we worked our way along this current edge we found one White-faced Storm-Petrel next to us on the line with the phalaropes

...then another was seen at the same time on the other side of the boat! Then yet another was spotted bounding along ahead of the boat!!! WOW! This is the most we've had on one of our trips and just one below the record for NC seen in a day. But also...it was the fifth week in a row we found one of the little Kangaroo Petrels!

What an epic month...

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us out there - these trips were all full and we had a really lovely group of people with us each day. Our leaders were also amazing and we thank Amanda Guciero and Elias Markee-Ratner for helping Brian, Daniel and I lead the trips. All photos today are mine. ~ Kate Sutherland

eBird Trip Reports can be found here: 27 Aug 28 Aug 29 Aug 30 Aug

Species List 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 August 2026

Semipalmated Plover 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 

Red-necked Phalarope 20 / 19 / 523 / 43 

Lesser Yellowlegs 0 / 5 / 0 / 0 

Semipalmated Sandpiper 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 

Ruddy Turnstone 0 / 0 / 4 / 0 

Long-tailed Jaeger 2 / 1 / 1 / 0 

Parasitic Jaeger 2 / 3 / 3 / 4

Sooty Tern 151 / 98 / 31 / 57

Bridled Tern 17 / 14 / 19 / 10

Sooty / Bridled Tern 0 / 0 / 0 / 4

Least Tern 0 / 1 / 0 / 0

Black Tern 34 / 59 / 55 / 62

Common Tern 9 / 19 / 1 / 5

Royal Tern 0 / 13 / 0 / 0

Wilson's Storm-Petrel 324 / 289 / 251 / 159

White-faced Storm-Petrel 0 / 0 / 3 / 0

Band-rumped Storm-Petrel 4 / 0 / 0 / 0

Trindade Petrel 1 dark morph / 0 / 1 light morph / 0

Black-capped Petrel 27 / 24 / 152 / 65

Atlantic Cory's Shearwater 48 / 21 / 23 / 83

Scopoli's Shearwater 359 / 528 / 286 / 390

Cory's / Scopoli's 277 / 440 / 209 / 232

Great Shearwater 46 / 68 / 29 / 39 

Manx Shearwater 0 / 0 / 1 / 0

Sargasso Shearwater 103 / 69 / 63 / 44

Masked Booby 1 / 0 / 0 / 1

Brown Booby 0 / 1 / 0 / 0

Brown Pelican 7 / 0 / 0 / 0

Barn Swallow 1 / 0 / 0 / 0

Prothonotary Warbler 1 / 0 / 0 / 0

Common Yellowthroat 1 / 0 / 0 / 0

American Redstart 1 / 0 / 0 / 0

peep sp 3 / 2 / 0 / 0

shorebird sp 15 / 1 / 0 / 12

jaeger sp 2 / 1 / 4 / 0

Offshore Bottlenose Dolphin 20 / 12 / 16 to 20 / 15 to 20

Atlantic Spotted Dolphin 70 to 90 / 42 to 47 / 7 to 12 / 0

Short-finned Pilot Whale 100 to 115 / 25 to 30 / 0 / 0

Goose-beaked Whale 5 to 6 / 0 / 9 to 13 / 0

beaked whale sp 0 / 2 to 3 poss M.eu / 0 / 2

rorqual sp 0 / 0 / 1 / 0

Leatherback Turtle 1 / 0 / 0 / 0

Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) 2 / 0 / 0 / 0

Tiger Shark 0 / 0 / 1 / 0

Mahi mahi catch 1 / 0 / 0 / 1

Yellowfin Tuna catch 1 / 0 / 0 / 4

Black-capped Petrels

We had an incredible encounter with a Cory's Shearwater eating what looks to be half of some type of mackerel (maybe Atlantic Chub Mackerel?) on the 28th and Scopoli's Shearwaters kept coming in and trying to get some from it. The sheer size difference was impressive! Check these out...

Cory's Shearwater

Scopoli's Shearwater

We had a lot of Sargasso Shearwaters, but this was the darkest one I've seen in awhile!

Sooty Terns were around in good numbers on every trip, though some days where there wasn't as much Sargassum around we didn't see quite as many...

CVSH & WTSH - Another for the Record Books! 21 & 22 August 2026 by, Kate Sutherland

Excellent conditions offshore Friday and Saturday gave us high expectations, but the bar was that we would find a fourth White-faced Storm-Petrel for a fourth week in a row, and we did that on Saturday morning at 09:00! What more could one ask for? Honestly? Nothing! 

We should start at the beginning because Friday's trip was no slouch... 

Three small Loggerhead Turtles joined us for the trip offshore to be released in the Gulf Stream.

It took a bit of time to find a location that wasn't too close to feeding seabirds or Bottlenose Dolphins, but there was gorgeous Gulf Stream water on the shelf near the shelf break and it had some nice patches of Sargassum (the floating brown algae we find offshore) for them to use for a bit of camouflage. Another notable non-avian sighting on Friday was a Great Hammerhead! Not something we typically see on our trips, more often it's the Scalloped or Carolina Hammerheads. 

Seabirds were around us all the time while we were offshore of the shelf break and we had great views of everything we saw except for an uncooperative Sooty Shearwater that flew across the bow directly into the sun glare and a Parasitic Jaeger we saw ahead of us harassing Sooty Terns snd shearwaters. Black-capped Petrels were around in good numbers and this was the first trip we didn't see any light form individuals...but we are starting to see some recently fledged birds, and that's always exciting since these birds have a lot of challenges where they next on Hispaniola.

Juvenile Sargasso Shearwaters are also showing up so their numbers are increasing offshore here right now - another species with struggles on their nesting islands, so again nice to see some youngsters making it to sea! This is part of why summer can be so much fun here...we're just beginning to see the young of the year showing up with our first juvenile Bridled Terns

and Long-tailed Jaegers seen this weekend as well. While we didn't see many Cory's Shearwaters on Friday, we did see a lot of Scopoli's and most of them were super cooperative. Band-rumped Storm-Petrels tend to decline in number this time of year but we still had at least a couple close to the boat!

The bird of the day for many, though, was a subadult Masked Booby spotted by participant Jeffrey Turner a little after 12:30.

In addition to the spectacular seabird show on Friday we also had some encounters with at least two groups of beaked whales - the first were Goose-beaked (aka Cuvier's Beaked) Whales and one individual that surfaced after the larger pod dove put on quite a nice show for us right next to the boat! This male is in the catalog kept by Duke Marine Lab and was first recorded in 2017, tagged in 2019 and last seen in 2021. 

Now, on to Saturday...the day that will hopefully be remembered long into the future as the day Daniel Irons found both Cape Verde and Wedge-tailed Shearwater! We gathered in the pouring rain outside of the shop at Oregon Inlet Fishing Center as strong thunderstorms moved by. There were more offshore, but the rain let up for us to board and Brian was able to keep us out of the worst of it as we headed toward the shelf break. Shifting winds always make us hopeful and believe it or not rain and thunderstorms can make for an incredibly productive day offshore - unsettled weather gets things moving. And it was a busy morning on the shelf with a lot of shearwaters including good numbers of Sargasso

and a few Atlantic Cory's in with the Scopoli's Shearwaters. We even had one Black-capped Petrel sail by before we reached the deeper water...which honestly comes quickly here east of Hatteras Island, more of a drop than a slope like we have south of Hatteras Inlet. There was still some lightning around as we slowed to tack offshore with the fish oil and the Wilson's began showing up in the slick. An immature Brown Booby came in from the bow and flew away quickly down the slick, we turned to relocate it but it was gone. Wilson's were pouring in and we easily had over 100 that had joined us in just a short time...Black-capped Petrels were arcing on the horizon...the breeze was up with the squalls around us...so we decided to slow down and put out more chum. Earlier than we would usually do so, but we wanted to take advantage of the conditions. And sure enough! A White-faced Storm-Petrel showed up on the slick!!

Less than ten minutes later a dark morph Trindade Petrel came to the slick!! Holy seabirds!

The wind had shifted a little to the north west and it was like magic. We had four species of shearwater, Black-capped Petrels, Band-rumped and Wilson's Storm-Petrels, a young Long-tailed Jaeger, plus Sooty and Bridled Terns all before picking up from the drift about an hour later.

Tacking offshore we continued to have good numbers of birds around us at all times. We witnessed an adult Bridled Tern feeding its offspring as the youngster sat on the sea! This is a first, while we regularly see this happen with Sooty Terns, we have never in all our combined years offshore seen a Bridled Tern sitting on the water! A nice Pomarine Jaeger came to the slick

and stuck with us for awhile despite being dogged by a persistent light form Black-capped Petrel! Another Brown Booby, this one an adult, was seen flying along with a ship that passed us a bit distant. We worked offshore then back in toward the current edges we had crossed to the south in the morning. As we headed toward some feeding shearwaters and terns another dark morph Trindade Petrel came to visit us!

A little extra chum convinced it to check us out and it make a few really nice passes before heading away ahead of us to chase a Sooty Tern! Another behavior that we've not often seen out here, but we did have a Trindade Petrel chasing shearwaters this spring in a feeding flock.

Winds fell out for the most part as we got closer to the shelf break in the afternoon, though still in deep water, those rips and current edges were looking productive for feeding flocks. As we headed toward one of them Brian spotted a juvenile Brown Booby sitting in the middle of the flock - this bird was pretty cooperative and everyone had great views as it picked up an flew away from us.

Brian started to follow it but Daniel called in on the headset that he'd seen an interesting shearwater flying that landed on the water with a few other shearwaters just off the port bow. It looked good for Cape Verde Shearwater...because it was a Cape Verde Shearwater!! The shout quickly went out on the loudspeaker and the bird flew as we all watched it fly to the right,

then bank to the left, then fly away from us on the starboard bow. The chase was on and we were able to relocate it with a flock of Scopoli's Shearwaters before it flew again and kept going. We lost sight of it...but didn't lose it at all, actually. This is the third, well documented, sighting of Cape Verde Shearwater for North America! The first was offshore from Hatteras in 2004, the next offshore from Massachusetts in 2022, and now this...our record in 2026! Everyone was absolutely buzzing as we finished up our time offshore of the shelf break. This individual was molting and I'm thinking it could be a bird that fledged last year. The feather wear looks like a good fit for that - super exciting!

It was about 13:20 when we crossed back onto the shelf and there were still quite a few shearwaters and Black Terns around as we picked up speed to head back to Oregon Inlet. It was raining a little, but Daniel and Sage both stayed out on deck to keep an eye out for birds to add to our inshore leg as I began the task of adding the numbers for the day and getting the species sorted. Less than an hour later a call came on the headset from Daniel up on the top deck - "It looks like there's a Wedge-tailed Shearwater out there around 2 o'clock!!" Brian and I looked at each other - holy shit! We quickly got on the bird, a light morph...really one of the only ones out there...and got everyone out on deck. Brian maneuvered us so that we got closer to the bird and it really came to check us out, flying across the bow and close to the boat for at least ten minutes!!

It was still in view for almost another ten minutes!! We all just stayed out there and watched. Minds blown. What a day. A totally unbelievable day. It is very unlikely that these two species will ever again be seen on the same trip. Another one for the record books. 

Thanks so much to everyone who joined us out there making these trips possible! And a huge thank you to our leaders today - Daniel Irons and Sage Church - both of them seriously deserved to be aboard for this trip. Daniel is a part of our Seabirding family now and has been on more trips than anyone other than Brian & myself. And Sage was one of the first to take advantage of our junior leader program over ten years ago - he's put in the time. Thanks to Brian for his excellent piloting skills, as usual! Photos in this post were all taken by me - Kate Sutherland

eBird Trip Reports can be found here: August 21 & August 22 

Species List for 21 / 22 August 2026

Red-necked Phalarope 4 / 6

Ruddy Turnstone  0 / 8

Least Sandpiper 1 / 1

Semipalmated Sandpiper 12 / 13

Long-tailed Jaeger 0 / 2

Parasitic Jaeger 1 / 0

Pomarine Jaeger 0 / 1

Laughing Gull 1 / 4

Sooty Tern 56 / 85

Bridled Tern 11 / 16

Black Tern 53 / 66

Common Tern 5 / 0

Royal Tern 2 / 3

Wilson's Storm-Petrel 138 / 391

White-faced Storm-Petrel 0 / 1

Band-rumped Storm-Petrel 2 / 4

Trindade Petrel 0 / 2 dark morph

Black-capped Petrel 53 / 43

Atlantic Cory's Shearwater 11 / 23

Scopoli's Shearwater 142 / 94

Cory's / Scopoli's 144 / 200

**Cape Verde Shearwater 0 / 1

Great Shearwater 23 / 40

Wedge-tailed Shearwater 0 / 1 light morph

Sooty Shearwater 1 / 0

Sargasso Shearwater 84 / 72

Masked Booby 1 / 0

Brown Booby 0 / 3

Barn Swallow 0 / 2

peep sp 15 / 3

shorebird sp 0 / 10

tern sp 4 / 0

Empidonax sp 1 / 0

Offshore Bottlenose Dolphin 55 / 12

Atlantic Spotted Dolphin 95 to 115 / 6

Short-finned Pilot Whale 40 to 50 / 30 to 40

Goose-beaked Whale 6 / 0

beaked whale sp 2 / 0

sea turtle sp 1 / 0

Great Hammerhead Shark 1 / 0

hammerhead sp 0 / 1

Mako Shark (prob) 0 / 1

small shark sp 0 / 1

Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) 0 / 2