And Just Like That, It's Spring! 16 & 17 May 2026 by Kate Sutherland

Another successful set for Seabirding and a good introduction to the spring! Overall we had good diversity / low numbers of individuals on both trips which is to be expected at this time of year. Winds were southerly or southwesterly both days with a little more wind Sunday morning than all day Saturday. The Gulf Stream was swift so we covered quite a bit of ground as we worked our way offshore each day! Ten species of tubenosed seabirds plus a near adult Masked Booby, Bridled Tern, and Pomarine Jaeger is certainly a great list for a couple of days mid-May and at least for me, the slower pace is worth the diversity!

Our last set in late April found better numbers of Black-capped Petrels, but our signature species was still out there showing off for us this weekend! We also had a quick glimpse of Desertas Petrel (previously lumped as Fea's Petrel which now is technically the Cape Verde Petrel - read our blog post from last year if you're not up to date on this here ) on Saturday and a distant, dark morph Trindade Petrel on Sunday's trip to round out our Pterodroma sightings! We saw both Scopoli's and Cory's well, one right after the other on Sunday so everyone got the feel for the differences in these two cryptic species.

A few distant Sooty Shearwaters on Saturday with much better views on Sunday. The little Sargasso (or as we like to call them, Sargassum) Shearwaters were in short supply but we had one foraging in what we wish was its namesake on Saturday, plucking a Plane-head Filefish from the floating brown algae! (photo Dave Shoch)

While Black-cappeds were around and did give us some nice views, the bird of the set had to be Band-rumped Storm-Petrel! We had a couple on Saturday including at least one "little" Band-rump then on Sunday there were at least a dozen tallied! They came in nicely to the chum and made some really close passes so that everyone could get acquainted with these larger stormies. We mostly saw the winter breeders who are just beginning to molt their primaries (photo by Dave Shoch), 

though there were a few nonmolting individuals documented as well. Leach's were a bit more standoffish with three seen over the set but none came very close to the boat. Wilson's Storm-Petrels, while not super numerous, were present and came close each trip for us to check out their feeding style 

and gorgeous yellow webbing on their feet.

Saturday morning on our way offshore that Masked Booby came up behind us and as we slowed it made an excellent pass! A single Bridled Tern was also seen that morning though it was offshore of the shelf break. On Sunday participant John Groskopf spotted a gorgeous adult Pomarine Jaeger making a beeline for something that we couldn't see - it wasn't super close, but the bulk and nice spoon-tail gave it away and many were quick enough to see it before it powered out of sight.

Marine mammals showed well on Sunday's trip with a pod of Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins coming quite close to check us out, one was even spyhopping, and some Pilot Whales (likely Short-finned) out there in the deep. This one had quite a small calf with it when it came by the boat, but for the most part they were spread out over a wide area!

Inshore in the morning we had a small group of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins riding the wake for a bit before peeling away. Saturday was good for fish and we caught one Wahoo in the morning on the fast troll then two Mahi mahi (aka Atlantic Dolphinfish) offshore. 

Overall it was a great set with great participants! Thanks everyone for joining us and bringing your enthusiasm and a big thank you to Dave Shoch for coming to help Brian, Daniel, and I lead the trips! Photos today are mine unless they are labelled otherwise ;)

We just did one eBird trip report for the set: https://ebird.org/tripreport/525524

Species List for 16 / 17 May 2026

Pomarine Jaeger 0 / 1

Bridled Tern 1 / 0

Black Tern 0 / 4

Common Tern 0 / 4

Common Loon 2 / 2

Wilson's Storm-Petrel 32 / 47 to 62

Leach's Storm-Petrel 2 / 1

Band-rumped Storm-Petrel 2 / 12 to 15

Trindade Petrel 0 / 1 dark morph

Desertas Petrel 1 / 0

Black-capped Petrel 58 to 61 / 31

Atlantic Cory's Shearwater 4 / 1

Scopoli's Shearwater 0 / 1

Cory's / Scopoli's 8 / 6

Sooty Shearwater 4 / 4

Sargasso Shearwater 6 / 4

Northern Gannet 0 / 1

Masked Booby 1 / 0

Semipalmated Sandpiper 2 / 0

Laughing Gull 1 / 0

Eastern Kingbird 1 / 0

Barn Swallow 7 / 2

Atlantic Spotted Dolphin 0 / 4 to 5

Offshore Bottlenose Dolphin 0 / 21

Pilot Whale (likely Short-finned) 0 / about 15

Portuguese Man of War 0 / 1

Wahoo 1 / 0

Mahi mahi 2 / 0

A few Black-capped Petrels to round out our images for the set! Light form above and dark form below from the 16th

And one by Dave Shoch from the trip on the 17th, another dark individual

One of the Sooty Shearwaters we saw on Sunday was eating something on the water - we didn't want to spook it so kept a bit of distance! Not sure what the prey item was - perhaps a squid!

Another Wilson's Stormie from the slick on Saturday

And a Band-rumped feeding in the slick on Sunday

One of the Mahi mahi we caught on Saturday followed by an iPhone photo of the Wahoo

And a very cool creature that lives in the stomach of Wahoos - we have found that larger, healthier Wahoo actually have more of these stomach parasites! This is actually a trematode, or flatworm, called Hirudinella ventricosa - thanks so much to Daniel for taking the time to show it to everyone and thanks to participant Eric Plage for giving me some photos for the blog!!