A Little Dose of North Wind - August 16, 17 by Kate Sutherland

I have been gone since the end of June to work in the Gulf of Mexico so Brian and the team got a few trips out in my absence...though the last trip on the 11th was following a lot of southerly wind. Having a bit of wind from the northeast on Friday, our first trip of the set, was really nice! Not only did we have nice temperatures but we had some swell rolling in from the east southeast as well thanks to Hurricane Ernesto. Even before we got to the shelf break on Friday we had a Fea's type Petrel fly right to the boat!

We were focused on a flock of birds ahead that had some Sooty Terns above and a Brown Booby 

in with some Cory's type and Audubon's Shearwaters - it must have been feeding in there with them! Just over the shelf we had a dark morph Trindade Petrel come to visit us before we even had a chum block out, what a great way to start not only the day but a two day set mid-August from Hatteras! 

Saturday, a day with a bit less wind, we found our first White-tailed Tropicbird of the year for bird trips and it really showed off for us checking out all of our "tropicbird teasers" that were out in the spread behind the boat. 

Both trips encountered excellent numbers and views of our Gulf Stream specialty the Black-capped Petrel and on Saturday we found a flock on the water with upwards of 60 individuals! Plus we saw one on Friday soaring way up high chasing a tern - not a behavior we see out there every day and super impressive. Views of both Atlantic Cory's and Scopoli's were easy to come by on both trips with some really nice shearwater flocks to sort through. Great Shearwaters were out there in low numbers with only four found on Friday and six on Saturday. Audubon's were around as well and of course they were easier to see on Saturday without as much wind. 

Sooty Terns were seen on both trips but we only had Bridled Terns on Saturday with at least eight encountered, there was a bit more flotsam around for them to perch on. 

We had good numbers of Wilson's Storm-Petrels for mid-summer but only one Band-rumped Storm-Petrel made an appearance on Friday's trip. This is the time of year they begin to become less predictable so it will be interesting to see how many we have running from Wanchese for the next week and a half. A quick glimpse of a jaeger on the shelf in the morning on Saturday was probably a Parasitic, but not seen well, and we had one first summer Pomarine Jaeger offshore of the shelf later that day. 

Red-necked Phalaropes seen well on Saturday afternoon rounded out our pelagic species list of 15! We also had some Common Terns out in the deep who followed us feeding on the chum and some Least Terns were seen offshore both days as well. 

Saturday we caught a blackfin tuna and a mahi mahi then Sunday Daniel hooked a blue marlin around a palm tree trunk that had a lot of life around it plus a Bridled Tern perched on top! 

He had it to the boat in short order then we paused to catch some of the mahi mahi there as well. Definitely a full couple of days offshore from Hatteras before we take the boat up the beach to Wanchese to run some trips from Oregon Inlet for the end of the month.

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us offshore and a huge thank you to Daniel Irons for leading both trips and Sage Church for joining us to help on Saturday! All photos today are mine 🙂

~ Kate Sutherland

Species List August 16 / 17 2024

Red-necked Phalarope - 0 / 10

Semipalmated Sandpiper - 0 / 1

peep species - 0 / 1

shorebird species - 1 / 0

Pomarine Jaeger - 0 / 1

jaeger species - 0 / 1

Laughing Gull - 1 / 0

Sooty Tern - 12 / 6

Bridled Tern - 0 / 8

Least Tern - 5 / 1

Black Tern - 0 / 9

Common Tern - 6 / 14

Common / Arctic Tern - 1 / 0

Royal Tern - 4 / 2

White-tailed Tropicbird - 0 / 1

Wilson's Storm-Petrel - 52 to 57 / 83 to 85

Band-rumped Storm-Petrel - 1 / 0

Fea's type Petrel (likely Desertas) - 1 / 0

Trindade Petrel dark morph - 1 / 0

Black-capped Petrel - 68 / 125

Atlantic Cory's Shearwater - 13 / 9

Scopoli's Shearwater - 13 / 24

Cory's / Scopoli's Shearwater - 82 / 122 to 125

Great Shearwater - 4 / 6

Audubon's Shearwater - 13 / 31

Brown Booby - 1 / 0

Bottlenose Dolphin - 0 / 36 to 40

Scalloped or Carolina Hammerhead Shark - 1 / 0

Caught and released - 

Blue Marlin - 0 / 1

Caught -

Blackfin Tuna - 1 / 0

Mahi mahi (Atlantic Dolphinfish) - 1 / 15

Wandering Glider - 0 / a few

Spot-wing Glider - 0 / at least one

Black Saddlebags - 0 / at least one

Black-capped Petrels!!

Atlantic Cory's Shearwater

Scopoli's Shearwater

Great Shearwater

Wilson's Storm-Petrels

Sooty Terns - juvenile above, adult below showing dark underprimaries

Bridled Tern - showing white in the underprimaries in flight plus grayer overall above than Sooty Tern

Common Tern

Bottlenose Dolphin

A Mahi mahi or Atlantic Dolphinfish being reeled in to the boat

And a few flyingfish for you! Top Bandwinged Flyingfish not a full adult, middle a "Sargassum" Flyingfish - perhaps a young bandwinged, and a Blackwing Flyingfish (not the Atlantic Blackwing...!)

Summer Sou'wester by Brian Patteson

 After about an eight week long hiatus, we got back to running birding trips aboard the Stormy Petrel on Friday, August 2nd. Less than a week before, a nice cold front had come through and we saw quite a few seabirds before the next heat wave set in and we got a brisk steady wind from the southwest. Too much of that wind will eventually kill both the birding and the fishing here, so I wasn't expecting a whole lot when we put to sea on Friday morning. We had seen most of the usual seabird suspects while we were fishing the day before in modest numbers out near the shelf break. It was a bit bumpy heading out, but not bad. Early morning squalls had moved out, so we didn't have to worry about rain, which actually makes for good birding here if it's heading in the right direction. In an hour and a half of steaming to the break, we saw almost no birds, but the deep water was not devoid of life.

I ran the boat a little farther than usual until we saw a few shearwaters. There was a notable lack of Sargassum and charter boats offshore were not getting any trolling bites to speak of. Nevertheless, we soon saw a few Sooty Terns and we also found Cory's, Scopoli's and Audubon's Shearwaters in short order. 

About 30 miles out the most common species for us was Black-capped Petrel.

 It took a while for any storm-petrels to show up at the chum slick, but we had both Band-rumped and Wilson's Storm-Petrels come in at the same time. Wilson's were very scarce, continuing a trend in recent summers. Band-rumps were pretty cooperative and we had plenty of opportunities to observe them at close range, which was nice, but never guaranteed, even in summer here. 

Shearwaters were generally scarce, and we only saw a couple of Great Shearwaters, but one of those came right to the boat. The majority of the the Calonectris shearwaters we saw appeared to be Scopoli's, which fits the pattern for summer out in the Gulf Stream.

With not much flotsam around and very sparse Sargassum, it's not surprising that we couldn't find a Bridled Tern. We finally did find a good perch for one, and it was holding a few fish below, but no terns. By most accounts, it was slow day for fishing out there, but we did manage to catch (and release) the only billfish of the day from Hatteras Inlet (five boats out.) It was something that we hadn't seen in years- a Longbill Spearfish- easily our most exotic find of the day. 

All things considered, it was a pretty good day. We had several people aboard who had never done a trip here, and while numbers and diversity was on the low side, we had really good looks at what we needed to see and there were Black-capped Petrels cruising around for most of the day. The ride back was bumpy and rough, but not too bad. Thanks go to Daniel Irons and David Shoch for working the deck, and to Dave for providing the bird pics. We were supposed to go out again on Saturday, but sea conditions were unfit for that, so it's always a good idea to book a couple of trips. 

Species seen on August 2, 2024

Sooty Tern- 13 

Black Tern-4

Royal Tern- 4

Least Tern- 1

Tern sp- 1

Laughing Gull- 1

Wilson's Storm-Petrel- 19

Band-rumped Storm-Petrel- 18

Storm-Petrel sp- 5

Back-capped Petrel- 48

Cory's/Scopoli's Shearwater- 20

Cory's- 2

Scopoli's- 6

Great Shearwater- 3

Audubon's Shearwater- 10

Dolphin (mahi mahi)- 2

LONGBILL SPEARFISH- 1 released, first for us in many years