How lucky we have been so far this Blitz Season!! Not only have we been able to run all of our trips without weather issues, but we've had something notable each day...until today, at least for eBird standards. But we would argue that the first summer Portlandica Arctic Tern and the South Polar Skua we found out in the deep were both notable! Definitely not species we see daily and not ones that we always see well. Both were super cooperative especially the Arctic Tern who stayed with us in the slick for almost four hours!! May 29th is a special day for me since it was my Dad's birthday and is also my niece's birthday - we almost always see something cool. So for me today it was the Arctic Tern that I got to feed for hours - and we also watched it picking food from the plentiful Sargassum around us all afternoon. It was certainly the most photographed individual for me from the Blitz this year and was just a really cool bird to study for so long. A few images are included here with some others from our day out there. North northeast winds are always interesting and make for pretty exciting conditions in the Gulf Stream - that was certainly true today :)
Our eBird trip report can be found here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/531306 and a big thank you to everyone who joined us out there today for our adventure! Leaders today were Brian Patteson, Daniel Irons, Jesse Anderson and John Tsortos. - Kate
Yes...the Arctic Tern! (Hazel's Birthday Bird this year ;) )
The South Polar Skua
Some Black-capped Petrels sitting on the water that we were able to approach
A Scopoli's Shearwater that came in to visit the slick
Leach's Storm-Petrel
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