Shearwaters are Here! 1 June 2023

We had some fog and north wind to deal with this morning...not typical of June here in Hatteras! But the Great Shearwaters still showed up here pretty much on time with a nice following flock feeding in the chum for most of the time we were offshore of the shelf break. This is the first trip of the spring we've had a good shearwater flock; with the Greats were some Sooties - Cory's, Scopoli's, Manx, and Audubon's all at least flew by the slick and a few paused to give us some nice views. It was awesome out there! Just after 1130 Bob Flood spotted a dark morph Trindade Petrel by the boat in the glare, everyone had a chance to see it - then keeping up the dark theme we had a South Polar Skua buzz our shearwater flock right at the end of the day! It was definitely one to remember... Thanks to Steve Howell and Liam Waters for helping us lead the trip!

Check out the list below and remember that you can click on the photo tab to see some images from the day.

https://ebird.org/tripreport/135712

And a few images from today (K. Sutherland)

Not the best but got an identifiable image of the Trindade Petrel

The other exciting, dark bird - South Polar Skua with Cory's type Shearwater by Steve Howell

White-faced Black-cap

Atlantic Cory's with dark under primaries, a big bill, and dark markings in the underwing coverts

Record shot of a Scopoli's showing white in the outer under primaries, specifically p10

And a couple by Steve Howell showing ventral and dorsal

Great Shearwaters were quite photogenic in the chum!

Here you can see the mottled underwings and the dark belly patch!

Sooty Shearwaters were also super cooperative! These young birds looked sleek and healthy

Wilson's Storm-Petrels were around in good numbers today!

And we saw this bird too! Maybe they wanted to see what we had following in the slick...