Alcids, Ashies, Albatross, and a Lifer Genital Slit

My second pelagic of the year out of Half Moon Bay was pleasantly birdy to begin with, but let's cut right to it...it got a lot better when we happened into a pod of motherfucking Orcas.

Orcas. One of the coolest, most interesting animals in the world? Easily. People absolutely lit up when we came upon this group, which we were able to stay with for a while.

There was much frolicking, rolling around, tail slapping, general flopping and other things I could describe more scientifically if I was a whale nerd. Isn't that a crazy pectoral fin? The massive width is a good way to identify it as a male.

The wee individual in the front was the smallest member of the pod. It was interesting to see all the different shapes and sizes of dorsal fins.

Tail slappin'.

There was one big, full-grown male in the group - I think he was the one waving his tail around above. He hung out with one other larger individual the whole time, while the rest of the pod stayed together some distance away.

We got stunning looks at these animals, easily the best in my life. The big boy came up right next to the boat...too close to crush! I can't believe I'm lucky enough to get to see stuff like this...the Blue Whales are good enough, this is just excessive.

Orca belly, complete with genital slit. His ween lives in there.

Shortly after we left the Orcas, we got on our bird of the day, this Laysan Albatross. In northern California (off Monterey, Half Moon Bay and Bodega Bay), these birds are much easier to come by in August than later in the season, and this August 19 boat hit the albajackpot. This was the first, and presumably last, I got eyes on this year.

Despite seeing a satisfactory number of them in California over the years, I've never had really great looks at them here. What's up with that? Good thing I got to pet a bunch on Midway.

I've met birders who haven't seen Sabine's Gulls before. Generally, they are not happy people. They have this vacant look, almost like they are empty inside. Not surprisingly, those with regular exposure to Sabine's Gulls are generally bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, though they are not necessarily enjoyable to be around (they are birders, after all).

No deluge of Cassin's Auklets like the previous week, though they were out there. The trick to seeing one well is to find a bird that is too full of food to attempt flying away, and too lazy to dive underwater when the boat comes near. This bird fit the bill.

This was a weird year for storm-petrels...no Blacks at all, which are not only expected up here, but they can often outnumber the other expected species (Ashy, Fork-tailed and Wilson's). Ashy Storm-Petrels did show well in August though.

Ashy Storm-Petrel putting on the brakes, right before dropping to the water to grab a miniscule morsel of food. By the way, the longevity record for ASSP is 30 years...seabirds can live heck of long lives, no matter what the size.

This has been a good year for seeing lots of Red Phalaropes offshore. This is my most adequate crush I can offer you.

This Common Tern made a close pass by the boat. In the greater bay area, it is much easier to find them 20 miles offshore than it is along the coast, though there is seemingly no shortage of good habitat (we have the Forster's Terns to prove it). It would be interesting to know where these birds are coming from...Alberta? The Northwest Territories?

Like many Common Terns, Tufted Puffins can hold dual citizenship, but this bird is likely one of the local breeders on the Farallones.

Despite how easy (relatively speaking) Tufted Puffins are to see during and immediately following their breeding season throughout their range, this is one of those birds that people just don't see very much the rest of the year. The only "off season" TUPU I've ever seen was a deceased bird that washed up in Humboldt County. Where exactly the bulk of the population winters is unknown.

Just a gannet hanging out on Sail Rock. No big deal.

Sooty Shearwaters were doing their normal afternoon thing, streaming by Pillar Point Harbor as we came back in. Another good boat trip in the books!

Pelagic Recap: August 16, Half Moon Bay

On August 16 we once again headed offshore, on the neverending quest to find Vague Runts. This was my second pelagic of the season, and high seas made it unlikely we would have a repeat performance of the storm-petrel show two weeks prior, but these were good conditions for finding Hawaiian Petrel. Of course, Hawaiian Petrel failed to show and I was burned yet again...which is getting really tiring...but it was a fun and birdy trip despite the swells.

Pigeon Guillemots breed in the breakwaters at the Pillar Point Harbor, and we had quite a few of them.  Oddly, this charming bird has not made it onto BB&B before, though they are certainly deserving.  In other embarrassing news, when I started birding I thought they were actually called "guillemonts" for several years.

As soon as we left the harbor, we could see vast numbers of Sooty Shearwaters moving north in a seemingly never-ending flock. It was truly an impressive number of birds...I had not seen numbers of them like that in quite a while. We motored up to them and watch them stream by for quite a while.

Sitting next to the massive river of shearwaters was a great way to start the morning.

Here's a Sooty in more typical lighting...they look more sooty, a little less magical.

Among things that I can never cease taking pictures of are humpback whale flukes.

If you've ever been on a pelagic trip and are confused about what people are talking about when they mention a "footprint" out in the water, then this really boring picture is for you!  The patch of slick water, the footprint, is what is left on the surface after a whale dives.

Shitty photo, I know, but Flesh-footed Shearwater (bird on he left, Pink-footed Shearwater on the right) is always a nice bird. 2013 was a great year for them, but I didn't see a single one in 2014, which I suspect is strongly correlated with the fact that there were hardly any Buller's around in 2014. Rare shearwaters appear to enjoy the company of Buller's it seems.  We did have a handful of Buller's, which is a good omen for later in the season.

It's not unusual to see banded Black-footed Albatross offshore, as there have been banding programs going at several of their breeding sites for many years now.  This black on yellow field readable band is from Tern Island (French Frigate Shoals), about 2,730 miles west of where we saw this bird. I did report this band resight, and promptly got a response in two days! Way to go USGS!

Black-footed Albatross are not wary birds. Reading albatross bands is not difficult. This bird was banded in May 2010 as a chick, and will be old enough to breed in about three years.

Albatross can surf with their big feet. With the way they can move offshore you would never guess how ungraceful they can be on land.

Storm-petrels put in a modest showing, but with a robust four species representing. This Ashy made a close pass by the boat.

Wilson's almost always seem to come in close to the boat eventually. It's a nice bird to see out here regularly, they were considered quite the rarity not too long ago.

Bird of the day, as far as the most unexpected species, easily went to this Surfbird that briefly followed the boat way out in San Francisco County waters. It's the first one I've ever seen offshore, and I never expected to see one in the company of Black-footed Albatross (the bird in the background). You never know what weird migrant you might cross paths with out there.

Steller's sea lions were hauled out on this buoy just offshore from the Pillar Point Harbor. Note the blunt snout, "bear-faced" look and blonde fur. That's a California sea lion head poking out on the right side for comparison.

There you go, a nice, succinct blog post with little writing and lots of photos...had to change things up after that last post. I'm going out again this weekend, on the hunt (as always) for sweet sweet Pterodroma goodness.

Raft Rage Out of Half Moon Bay

Pelagic season has started off with a bang...not with any proper rarities, but with the next best thing...huge rafts of storm-petrels!  I've seen bigger flocks, but these birds were relatively approachable and were very diverse. I was one of the leaders on the August 2 Shearwater Journeys trip out of Half Moon Bay, which featured warm temperatures, calm seas, and a solid variety of seabirds.  But before the petrels came to pass, there were a lot of other highlights. Right out of the harbor I got my county sea otter, which is a rarity this far north.

Marine mammals were plentiful offshore, with numerous humpback whales, including a few who were engaging in some facemelting breaches, which this obviously is not a picture of.

Pink-footed and Sooty Shearwaters. There were some big shearwater flocks in relatively shallow water, feeding in big groups alongside assorted marine mammals.

This shearwater flock was diving into the water amongst a big pod of short-beaked common dolphins. It was a vulgar display of marine life.

Common dolphins are more of a SoCal species, so they are always a nice surprise this far north. They also really like bowriding, so they almost always come in close to the boat.

Can't complain about looks like this.  We also had Dall's and harbor porpoises, and Pacific white-sided dolphins during the day.  Other nonbirds of note included fur seals, Steller's sea lion, and two blue sharks.

Sabine's Gulls in alternate plumage are one of the best things to see offshore, not so much for rarity or majesty, but for overall aesthetics.

Aesthetically pleasing is an understatement.

As I've mentioned in one of the recent Maine posts, Arctic Terns are missed on many boat trips and are often tough to get a respectable look at.  This bird was loafing on some driftwood and was much more cooperative than the average offshore tern.

Nice wing pattern on this young bird.

Unlike the Arctic Terns and Sabine's Gulls, this Scripps's Murrelet was butt ugly. It's undergoing some serious molt, and has a bill deformity to boot. I generally do not talk ill of murrelets of any kind, but this one was astonishingly trashy. I'm sure it'll look much better in a few weeks.

No matter how often I see Black-footed Albatross, and no matter how many photos I take of them, I can't seem to stop, and they invariably make it into pelagic trip posts no matter what. So here is a gratuitous albatross photo, I hope ya'll have the same tireless enthusiasm for them that I do. Apparently the captain of another boat saw a couple Laysan Albatross in the same area the day before, but we had to be happy with BFAL.

I said storm-petrels made this trip, so lets get into some storm-petrels.  This is an Ashy Storm-Petrel, and amazingly enough you can actually make out its ashy color tones.  Compare the relative paleness of this bird with the Black Storm-Petrel a few photos below.

We had over 100 Wilson's Storm-Petrels on the day, which is a new record in California.  It was weird to see so many...this was California, not North Carolina. They aren't as wary of boats as the other storm-petrel species here can be, so we typically get pretty good looks at them when they are found.

Although the number of Wilson's present were surprising, I couldn't get over how many Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels were out there.  There were hundreds of them, and I didn't see a single one on trips last year...in fact I'm not sure if anyone did!  Talk about an unpredictable bird...

To round out the storm-petrels for the day, here is a Black Storm-Petrel.

This is a part of one of the rafts of petrels we came across.  Some of us on the boat were getting weak at the knees at the sight of so many clustered together...these flocks are fertile grounds for holding some kind of rarity, and it does not help that both Wedge-rumped and Tristram's Storm-Petrels were found a few miles away on the Farallones earlier this year.  All four species shown above are visible in this photo.

I like how this little group of Fork-taileds has composed themselves.  That's an Ashy on the bottom right, note the dark gray (not black) color compared to the silvery Fork-taileds, which are seemingly manufactured to be the color of a fog bank.

Bear witness to another storm-petrel raft, with all four species.  Hopefully the storm-petrels will be holding it down for a while longer, it would be great to track these flocks down again.  Big storm-petrel flocks are a luxury, not a reliable thing at all, and seeing so many at the very beginning of August totally took me by surprise.

I worked with Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels in Alaska, so I have a soft spot for them.  Here's one of the closer shots I got.

On the way back in we came across this juvenile Tufted Puffin, doing its best Rhinoceros Auklet impression, which they are prone to do.  That's a Common Murre on the left.

So, all in all a hella good trip, though I still have not met a Hawaiian Petrel...I'll try again this weekend.