Sunday May 31, 2020 by Kate Sutherland

"Looking for a Birding Adventure?" Our three fold brochure says this on the front and today we had a birding adventure!  Winds were northerly when we left the inlet this morning and picked up over the course of the day.  I myself prefer large seas and windy conditions, it seems that most seabirds agree with me - and they were out there flying today!  Less than an hour and a half after we reached the shelf break a dark Trindade Petrel flew right in to the slick!  Wow!  I mean close, and made enough passes for everyone to get excellent views if not excellent photos!  (Kate Sutherland) 

Black-capped Petrels were in their element and feeding behind the boat with even more Wilson's than we had yesterday!  It was awesome out there, and while we had no rain today we still got a little wet, but I also will take a bath in the ocean any day if it means I can experience the habitat of our seabirds - that would be wind and waves!  We're out there again tomorrow, so stay tuned and perhaps we will turn up another species for the Blitz!

Thank you to our participants!  We couldn't do it without you!  And thank you Kyle Kittelberger and Ed Corey - your photos today are much appreciated and your hard work helped make the day successful!

Species List for May 31, 2020

Trindade Petrel - 1 dark morph

Black-capped Petrel - 37

Cory's Shearwater - 28 

Cory's type - 2

Great Shearwater - 3

Sooty Shearwater - 14

Manx Shearwater - 1

Audubon's Shearwater - 21

Wilson's Storm-Petrel - 215

Band-rumped Storm-Petrel - 3

Leach's/Band-rumped - 3

Common Tern - 2

Laughing Gull - 1

Portuguese Man of War - 1

The seas were adventurous for gadfly petrels - Trindade top, Black-capped below (Kate Sutherland)

Trindade Petrel dorsal (Ed Corey) & ventral (Kyle Kittelberger)

Black-capped Petrel (Ed Corey) intermediate, tending towards dark faced bird.

We had a couple of Cory's types that had some white in the underprimaries but none, or very little, in p10.  I would lean toward Scopoli's, but for now we will just leave as is!  (Kate Sutherland)

We just had a few Great Shearwaters (Ed Corey)

And more Sooty Shearwaters, they were moving in the afternoon inshore of the shelf break (Kyle Kittelberger)

We had two Common Terns visit us out there today - the first looked slight and delicate enough for us to mistake it for an Arctic Tern at first glance. (Kyle Kittelberger)

Ed Corey captured this image of our Man of War!