We had our first scheduled September trip this weekend and while we had to travel a bit farther to get to the Gulf Stream, all of our expected species were there and we had great views of most of them during our time offshore of the shelf break! Skies were overcast as we headed offshore which always makes for a gorgeous sunrise and everyone was out on deck to watch.
Thunderstorms were moving offshore to our south and we were lucky to have overcast and dark skies somewhere around us all day making for some really impressive photography. People always ask me what my favorite bird is offshore here...and my reply is always "the bird I'm looking at!" just because seabirds are my favorite birds and it's challenging to choose a favorite. But admittedly Pterodroma petrels are some pretty special and amazing seabirds. A number of our participants were seeing them for the first time on this trip and what a time to get to see your first Black-capped Petrel!! We run many trips in the spring when Black-cappeds have just finished nesting and are molting...or really worn looking. But in September they're finished or just finishing and they are incredibly striking birds!
Because they are so regular for us offshore here a lot of our participants take them for granted and don't always look at them when they're around - but they are rare birds and there is still a lot we don't know about them - we honestly don't even know all of their breeding locations. Hispaniola is home to some of these birds and there are dedicated people doing their best to track the birds in Haiti and Dominican Republic from year to year - noting their successes and failures. Black-capped Petrels are on the Endangered Species list here in the US but thanks to our current administration's failure to continue to protect the species on this list with personnel and funding who knows what will become of the work we've been able to accomplish? And believe me, I know there is a long list of species impacted by these changes.
Sargasso Shearwaters are another Gulf Stream specialty that we're glad to show people on our trips! We saw almost 100 of these small black-and-whites even though Sargassum was lacking in the blue water for most of the day. Bridled Terns are another species we hope for around the Sargassum and usually finding some floating mats of the brown algae is the most important feature to find one perched on flotsam - luckily close to the end of our time in the deep we found a really nice current edge / color change that happened to have a Bridled Tern perched on a shoe!
I can't tell you how many times we've seen them on shoes or flip-flops! This individual was super cooperative for us and after we saw that one we found at least eight more along this condition. Sooty Terns also are typically associated with Sargassum though we tend to see them just about anywhere there might be some fish to eat! And we had some nice views of them out in the deep as well. At least two Parasitic Jaegers were seen taking advantage of the Sooty Terns offshore and we had a couple of Long-tailed Jaegers on the trip as well. Red-necked Phalaropes are still around and we had a lot on the shelf as we approached the break in the morning then we had some offshore as well, mostly where we had the nice condition in the afternoon, pictured here with a Goose-beaked Whale surfacing on the nearside.
On that same condition we had a juvenile Brown Booby which according to eBird would be the rarest bird of the day...though arguably Black-capped Petrels are much rarer than Brown Booby!
Thanks so much to everyone who joined us out there today! I'm glad we were able to get out there and see the target species so well. Thanks also to our leaders today - Brian Patteson and Daniel Irons are always on board plus we had Andrew Thornton as our guest leader. Photos today are mine and thanks for reading!! - Kate Sutherland
The eBird Trip Report can be found here: 12 September 2026 Which will give you a list of bird species we saw out there...but we also saw 17 to 20 Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, 33 to 35 Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins, and at least nine Goose-beaked (aka Cuvier's Beaked) Whales in three different encounters!! While we saw mostly the usual flyingfish species there was one large, Atlantic Blackwing Flyingfish that was an offshore hightlight ;)
A few more images from the day!
Black-capped Petrel light form individuals
Another view of the dark individual pictured in the text above
Scopoli's Shearwater
A Cory's / Scopoli's - my feeling on this one is Atlantic Cory's...but there is a bit of white in that outer most under primary. We had a lot of birds on this trip (and last weekend as well) that had more dark in the leading edge of the underwing but had extensive white in the outermost under primaries. Most of the birds we saw today were Scopoli's.
Wilson's Storm-Petrel
And of course a few of the Goose-beaked Whales we saw!
This individual in the two photos below had a number of Cookie Cutter Shark scars on it! These are the circular scars in addition to the rakes from teeth of other male Goose-beaked Whales (you can see these teeth in the top photo).
And finally a cloudscape from the morning commute...
