It was good to be out in the Gulf Stream looking for
seabirds after a few days of scrappy fishing earlier this week. I actually saw a White-tailed Tropicbird on
one of the fishing trips, so I was hopeful that the recent east and
southeasterly winds would make a nice set up for our trip aboard the Skua
today. We had a weak cold front push
down and stall yesterday and the boundary spawned the usual showers and
thunderstorms last night and this morning.
We somehow managed to sneak between some areas of heavy rain on the way
out and most of the electricity was up to the east of where we headed. The slow moving storms forced us to stay in
the south most of the day and the rain kept us inshore of 200 fathoms, but it
didn’t matter much because we still had a great day. We started chumming in 50 fathoms and the
first storm-petrel we saw was a Band-rump.
After that it wasn’t long before the Wilson’s piled in and we even had
some nice views of Leach’s Storm-Petrels feeding in the slick. Black-capped Petrels came in quite close on
many occasions and we had good looks at four species of shearwaters- Cory’s,
Great, Audubon’s, and a very late Sooty.
Bridled Terns found the slick and followed at arm’s length for several
minutes. Except for a little while when
we got wrapped up in the heavy rain we had a variety of birds feeding in the
wake and following the boat from start to finish. Photography was a bit tough due to the low
light at times, but the clouds made for better photo ops than we would have had
otherwise at midday. Working back into
the shelf waters, we saw our first Masked Booby of the year. It made a few close passes and then flew of
to the west. Then, just as we were
starting to run back to the inlet, we came upon a nice flock of
shearwaters. This flock also included a
Pomarine Jaeger and a few Sooty Terns- both adults and juveniles! All in all it was a great day to be out in
the smaller boat. It wasn’t really windy
and the clouds and rain kept it cool.
The birds were hungry and they were close. Our participants were out for their first
Gulf Stream pelagic trip and they hit the jackpot. Good diversity, close looks, and a
rarity! I’m looking forward to our next
small boat adventure. -Brian Patteson
Black-capped Petrel 14
Cory's Shearwater 58
Great Shearwater 9
Sooty Shearwater 1
Audubon's Shearwater 13
Wilson's Storm-Petrel 177-202
Leach's Storm-Petrel 5-7
Band-rumped Storm-Petrel 10-11
Masked Booby 1
Sooty Tern 3
Bridled Tern 4
Tropical Tern sp 1
Black Tern 1
Pomarine Jaeger 2
All photos by Brian Patteson
Black-capped Petrels
Cory's Shearwater
Great Shearwater
Audubon's Shearwater
Band-rumped Storm-Petrel
First summer Masked Booby!!
One of the first young Sooty Terns of the year!
Bridled Tern
Beautiful series!
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