The Blackfish Giveth: Lifering Over The Cordell Banks

I've seen some Orcas. Not hella, but a handful. I've seen them in the Aleutian Islands (Attu and Buldir), one out of Half Moon Bay, and now one out of Bodega Bay. Shearwater Journeys had a trip out of Bodega Bay last week, and I had the good fortune to be leading that day. In my book, it was a Great Success.

The uncanny thing is that almost every time I see Orcas (and possibly every time...if only I had kept this very important data) I end up getting a life bird the same day...last time it was a double lifer day, with Salvin's Albatross and Craveri's Murrelet. So although many people who have seen Orcas in the wild feel a strong, almost mystical attraction to them, their feelings for The Grampus pale compare to mine.

As you can tell from the dorsal fin, this wasn't a big adult male. This is about as far as it came out of the water...we could hardly see the whites of it's eyepatches. It looked like it was carrying a kill around, thus it's lack of interest/avoidance of the boat and the number of birds feeding on kill remnants (see below).

And as you have deduced by now, I got a life bird.

Let's not waste any time. This was my life bird, one I was really hoping for this fall due to the warm water that has been sitting off the coast for several months now. It is none other than the legendary GUMU (Guadalupe Murrelet), an extremely good bird in northern California and a difficult and unpredictable find anywhere in U.S. waters. Very few have made it this far north in recent years, at least close enough to shore to be found by boats making day trips.

Compared to Scripps's Murrelet, note the longish bill, huge white spur in front of the eye, and also the white kinda creeping up behind the eye, giving the eye a "framed" look.

The bird was quite cooperative, and I have no doubt that everyone on the boat was able to see it. This was the last alcid I needed to see from the eastern Pacific!

Before all the Synthliboramphus excitement, the day began with seeing some familiar faces from SoCal boarding the boat in Bodega Bay, which is a difficult thing to process when you woke before 5 AM, your morning coffee is wearing off and your dementia-inducing seasick medicine is beginning to kick in. Luckily I remembered everyone's names and awkwardness was averted, which in some circles is enough to make me a BIRDING HERO.

As we got a few miles out, the expected fog bank closed in. A (presumable) Wilson's Snipe whizzed by, which was not a bird anybody expects to find offshore. Gulls following the boat began attracting Common/Arctic Terns in decent numbers, which zipped in to view and back into the fog in a matter of seconds. This was odd, since we were not very far out and these terns are typically not very numerous. Once we cleared the fog, the true picture emerged....there were Arctic Terns everywhere. For almost the entire day, one could scan the horizon and see Arctic Terns. There were only a handful of confirmed Commons. Personally, I would guess that I saw 150+ Arctic Terns that day, which is more than I'd seen in my life combined.

When encountering small terns at sea and you have a decent camera, I highly recommend on-the-spot chimping to help confirm the identity of uncooperative terns. That, or have Steve Howell near you at all times. These are both Arctics...check out the almost Sabine's Gullish wing pattern of the young bird on the left.

Note the crisp black edges on the primaries.

I've never had such good looks at these birds before. Hella cooperative.

Here's a classically streamlined, long-tailed Arctic. Of course, as you can see from the above photos, not all of them are going to look like this.



Here is a Common Tern, which looks dumpy and ungraceful (disgraceful?) in comparison. Note the slighly longer bill and the slightly different shape of the "keel". The black on the primaries looks messy in comparison to what Arctics show.

Less numerous but also omnipresent were Sabine's Gulls. We never had a single flock, but they were with us the entire day as well, almost all the way back in to the harbor.

And what do hella small pelagic gulls and terns mean? It means jaegers, obviously. And we did have hella. Only 3 Long-tailed for some reason, but lots of Pomarine and lots of Parasitic, most of which were pretty far offshore. There was much thievery to be had on the high seas with so many small terns and Sabine's Gulls around...here dark and light Parasitic Jaegers team up on a really bummed out Arctic Tern.

A different Parasitic Jaeger, this one a very clean adult.

Black-footed Albatross, Arctic Tern, Black Storm-Petrels, a shearwater sp. and a California Gull all converge on where the Orca made a kill. Pretty cool collection of birds if you ask me.

Pomarine Jaegers do not fear the boat. This bird came right in for a brutal crushing.

Look! Jaeger talons!

Here's one that still has it's spoons, although they look pretty thrashed.

Long-tailed Jaegers remind me of falcons sometimes...I reckon this photo illustrates that nicely.

The cap on a Long-tailed Jaeger is very different from the other jaegers...it's very neat and confined, which for some intangible reason helps make them a cut above the rest..

Yes, we had some skua too. This was my first JAEGER SLAM of the season. It is typical, by the way, to capitalize JAEGER SLAM, in the event you experience one (slammed by one). This is also an extremely typical skua picture, in case you are wondering.

Enough of the kleptoparasites. We also had a single Tufted Puffin on the trip, in Sonoma County waters.

This bird is either going through a gnarly molt or is rapidly evolving into a new sort of penguin-being (interesting if true). I've never seen a healthy-looking alcid look so poorly equipped for flight before.

It was a great way to kick off a grimy weekend of high-quality September birding. I'll be on Debi's Monterey boat this Saturday...see you there.

Bodega Bay: Waves, Fog, and Sick Slick Birds

Each pelagic trip is a different beast. My first west coast boat of the year was back on August 30, out of Bodega Bay. Much of the trip was problematic for finding birds...too much swell and too much fog. The seas were ideal for finding a Pterodroma flinging itself off of wave crests up in to the air, but of course we did not encounter any such thing. Some vomiting occurred...typical.

What really saved the trip was the two oil slicks (the fish they call Menhaden...don't tell me you thought otherwise) we put out. The first slick in particular brought in huge numbers of birds that we didn't even know were out there. Tubenoses have an incredible sense of smell, so any hungry bird in the area would come in to check it out, which in turn brought in curious sight-dependent birds like jaegers and Sabine's Gulls. The second slick was conveniently applied next to a small raft of storm-petrels (including Black and Fork-tailed, above), who were obliged to investigate.

Part of the large Sabine's Gull flock that came in to the first slick. That wing pattern holds a special place in my heart.

See what I mean? What a gull.

At the first slick, we had a FLOCK of Long-tailed Jaegers hanging out next to the boat, harassing the Sabine's Gulls. I think the Bird Gods were wise to add the yellow blush on adult birds.

In fact, we had every possible plumage of Long-tailed Jaeger in the flock, including an adult that still had its breeding rectrices (which I was unable to crush properly). This is a second-year bird, retaining a bit of brown mottling on the breast.

Here is a "light morph" juvenile, with pale head and blonde collar.

"Dark morph" juvenile. Note how little white there is in the primaries, a strong field mark for this species.

Of course, no fall pelagic is really complete without Buller's Shearwater. The first oil slick brought in a flock of these soothing shearwaters as well. Like Sabine's Gull, viewing the upperwing pattern triggers strong emotional responses, on many levels.

At oil slick #2, there were a number of Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels that came to visit. The dark coverts of the underwing contrast strongly with the rest of the bird, even in thick fog.

The Fork-taileds came hella close to the boat, even eating a bit of popcorn on the water. And yes, Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel is an astoundingly stupid name for this bird. Who in their right mind would look at this bird and think, "Goodness, I am absolutely unable ignore the shallow fork of the tail. I cannot look away. There is simply no other distinctive feature on this bird that is more descriptive. Nothing that makes it unique among the storm-petrels of the North Pacific. Forevermore, this species shall be known to the masses as Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel"?

Black Storm-Petrel is yet another "fork-tailed" species with a slightly better name. Like Fork-tailed, they are a bit braver than their Ashy counterparts, swooping in close to the boat for crippling looks.

I think this photo really conveys how large and long-winged these birds are compared to the other puny storm-petrels they typically accompany in central/northern California. Too bad the fog was so thick, I really could have put the crush on these birds.

Being in the presence of Blue Whales really puts things in perspective. We are small and shitty organisms compared to these behemoths.

At the end of the day, the Bodega trip was a lot of fun, although we were severely handicapped by the waves and weather. Aside from the photographed species above, South Polar Skua, Wilson's Storm-Petrels and more Red Phalaropes than I have ever seen were highlights. Looking forward to going out again in two weeks!