Seabirding: And Summer is HERE! 15 & 16 August 2025

After having to cancel our trips at the beginning of the month it was really nice to get out there this past weekend on the 15 and 16th! And while we didn't find anything super rare or unexpected we did have excellent views of our usual suspects like Black-capped Petrels, Sargasso Shearwater, and Band-rumped Storm-Petrel. As can be expected in the Gulf Stream, conditions were different from day to day with some unsettled sometimes rainy / squally weather on Friday then nice breezy conditions on Saturday. The Gulf Stream was a bit quirky for these trips, which actually served us well on Saturday since the wind was from the north and northeast! Without much more than a knot or so of current the seas were nice and manageable. Nothing says summer out here like shearwater flocks with Sooty Terns! And on both trips we encountered this feature. Friday a bit more running from flock to flock, then Saturday we had tubenoses in sight from the time we hit the shelf break until we got back there in the afternoon.

As many of you know, Black-capped Petrel is our Gulf Stream specialty and while we saw them Friday and even had a nice sized flock of them on the water, they were not interested in the chum and didn't approach the boat very closely. Saturday they were a bit more cooperative, perhaps because of the wind? Or perhaps they were just a bit hungrier and thus curious? Who knows? We were just glad to have some nice views of them not only close to the boat, but flying high with their diagnostic Pterodroma flight!

Great Shearwaters were really moving on Saturday and while Friday found close to equal numbers of Cory's type and Greats, Saturday had close to a thousand Greats with just about 300 Cory's type shearwaters. It was a spectacle to watch them streaming by and really nice to compare the flight style of the shearwaters with one another and the Black-cappeds in the distance!

Cory's and Scopoli's were seen well on both trips with nice views in the shearwater flocks. Of course there are still a number of distant birds that have to be left as Cory's / Scopoli's but usually in the summer we can get some closer passes in the shearwater flocks. Pictured below is Scopoli's (top) and Cory's (bottom) from Friday and Saturday respectively.

Sargasso Shearwaters, while we see them in the Gulf Stream regularly, the summer can be a good time to encounter larger numbers and they were super cooperative for such a small shearwater on both of our trips this weekend. They were right in there feeding with the larger shearwaters in most of the flocks we found! Most shearwaters were focused on the flyingfish pushed to the surface by small tuna below! Here is a Sargasso Shearwater with quite a large one and a Sooty Tern with a smaller one. We regularly see at least four or five species of flyingfish on our trips though as many as thirteen have been recorded here over the years.

And while Sooty Terns, both adult and juvenile, were cooperative, the Bridled Terns we saw were not. Both days there were distant Bridled Terns that just didn't come close and always seemed to be traveling in the opposite direction 😑. Wilson's Storm-Petrels were seen well on both trips, though like the Black-cappeds they seemed a bit more interested in the chum on Saturday!

Band-rumped Storm-Petrels have been a bit scarce this year but we found three on each day of this set. Friday we had one of the smaller Band-rumpeds that we see in the spring sometimes and the others looked like the more typical "Grant's" type Band-rumpeds.

Of note as well were some Parastic Jaegers offshore on Saturday and we had a flock of Hudsonian Godwits fly by that morning as well! These large shorebirds tend to move over the ocean as they head south in the fall, it's always cool to see them out there! Last year we had some on our trips from Oregon Inlet...so we'll see if we turn any up on our trips there later this month. Overall we had a couple of solid trips even without a rarity and on Saturday a Roseate Tern in a flock with Common and Black Terns on the shelf in the afternoon was just the perfect way to cap off the set!

Thanks so much to everyone who joined us out there and a big thank you to Kevin Metcalf for joining us to help lead the trip on Saturday. Otherwise Brian Patteson, Daniel Irons and myself were aboard leading the trips as usual. All photos today are mine! Thanks for reading, everyone! ~ Kate Sutherland

eBird Trip Reports can be found here:

15 August 2025

16 August 2025

Species List for 15 / 16 August 2025

Semipalmated Plover 1 / 0

Hudsonian Godwit 0 / about 40

Red-necked Phalarope 0 / 82

Sanderling 1 / 0

White-rumped Sandpiper 1 / 0

Semipalmated Sandpiper 11 / 0

peep sp. 0 / 2

shorebird sp. 7 / 0