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!

Of Fruit and Glory: Lifering Again In Ventura County

Brown Boobies have made their presence known in 2015 up and down the California Coast all the way north to British Columbia. You show me warm water, and I will show you boobies. All photos today are from Ventura and Santa Barbara County waters.

In October of this year, I returned to an autumnal birding battleground where I had not waged avian war since 1999: Ventura County. It was like MacArthur returning to the goddamn Phillipines. Pretty much the same thing. The place can, and has been, littered with Vague Runts in the fall, so it was great to be back at the proper time of year. I had racked up massive numbers of life and state birds in the 90's in Ventura, when I was but a young nerd, so it was refreshing to be back during the month when anything can happen. This time, I had a specific target bird in mind...not a standard rarity per se, but a tubenose that can be found offshore in the right month and the right luck of the right year. And so with comrades old and new, we lurked offshore on a big Island Packers catamaran.

The most abundant bird of the day was Black-vented Shearwater; we had obscene numbers of them in the channel near Santa Cruz Island. It was really, really gross. 

Jaegers were in abundance, which is always good news for a birder, but it also means that a birder is going to get seriously humbled. Jaeger identification is not for the faint of heart.

I reckon this is a juvenile Long-tailed. It's real dark. Look at that cute little stubby bill.

Here is another juvenile Long-tailed. It's not real dark, unlike the previous bird. It's doing a passable juvenile Western Gull impression here, which is odd.

This was an interesting bird...there was debate over dark Pomarine Jaeger vs. South Polar Skua as this bird made a single pass by the boat; despite the heavy bill, I don't think this has wings broad enough for a skua, and I would also expect to see more white visible (or any at all) on those fresh primaries growing in. It's also a deep, almost featureless dark brown on the upperparts, all of which point toward Pomarine Jaeger in my book.

Out between Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands we ran into some migrant Pigeon Guillemots. These birds migrate north for the winter, which is not a trendy style of migration at all.

We had a mellow pair of young Sabine's Gull near the boat for a bit. It was a soothing experience.

Here is the second bird. Twice mellowed. By this point in the day the birding had gotten a bit slow, but finally a few Black Storm-Petrels appeared. A few minutes later, we came up on what exactly I was hoping for: rafts.

Rafts of storm-petrels, of course. Storm-petrels are not for dilettantes. These are not birds meant for casual enjoyment. They certainly don't belong anywhere near stringers, because the devoted stringer can transform a storm-petrel into any number of species with little effort. Storm-petrels, by their very frustrating and subtle nature, can make you want to bash your head into a wall...or they can yield sweet, nectary storm-petrel fruit.

Ah, there is nothing so refreshing as a big raft of storm-petrels. There were lots of Blacks, the expected species, but it was quickly apparent there were much smaller birds in with them. Were the rafts bearing fruit???  See top rightish above.

And there they were...Least Storm-Petrels (front right and back). Finally. This was a life bird. The wait was finally over. The fruit had been bore.

This was the bird that had lured me down...it was time we became acquainted, and it was indeed a pleasure. Leasts are very small, very dark (note lack of any noticeable upperwing markings on the bird above), and have tiny, wedge-shaped tails. They really do resemble little bats in shape, if not in flight style. Majestic? No. Glorious? Yes.

After getting past the Least and Black Storm-Petrels (and getting some bonus Ashy Storm-Petrels), we came upon a pair of murrelets. Luckily, they were Craveri's Murrelets, which I'd only seen once before. These were good birds, damn good birds, especially on top of a long-awaited lifer. Aren't Mexican birds great?

You can see their distinctive dark underwings, which Guadalupe and Scripps's lack.

Finally, it was time to visit the famed booby roost at Santa Barbara Island. Brown Boobies began to appear more and more frequently, and everyone was hoping an additional Sulid would be lurking at the roost.

Eager birders frothed at the mouth and smacked their lips lustily. They wanted boobies something fierce.

Good lord, there were a lot of boobies on that rock...85! Here is a chunk of the boob roost.

At the end of the day, it was a great trip, and a nice change of pace from the waters I typically lurk in. Thanks to Dave Pereksta for organizing it and Joel Barrett for encouraging me to come down. A couple days later, with one Gareth Jones and Officer Searcy (the notorious Bird Policeman), I found my nemesis Ventura County bird trodding upon the sod...a Red-throated Pipit. They have been a dime a dozen a recent years, but for whatever reason that was not the case in the 90's, when it was my turn to flog the sod. Despite the lack of photos, I assure you that it was a succulent (and Siberian) county bird.

Between the nostalgia and quality birds, my time down there was Great Success. Luckily, I did not have to wait much longer to catch the next Siberian Express...you know what I'm saying?

Jaegers Compiled..Boobs And Tubes...A Nemesis Named

So long Black-footed Albatross, I will see you next year. Please bring along some of your Short-tailed buddies to our waters next fall, thanks. Photographed off of Half Moon Bay, CA.

It was a weird year offshore here in the bay area...for me, rough waters and a moderate amount of seabird activity. Lots of humpbacks, but no blues. I will say right off the bat that I did NOT see any of the rare petrels, which pains me greatly, especially with that cooperative White-chinned Petrel that just sat next to the boat like a goddamn fulmar for an unacceptably long amount of time. But that is the gamble you take as a pelagic junkie...you just roll the dice over and over again and eventually you will get played a hand of lifers. Here is a quick photo summary of the last trips I led for Shearwater Journeys this year, out of Half Moon Bay, Bodega Bay, and Sausalito, respectively.

The more I bird, the more comfortable I am with jaegers. That is, comfortable with the fact that identifying jaegers is hard. This juvenile putative year-old Pomarine was easy enough to identify by species, but Tom Johnson had no choice but to step in and question (correctly, I think) what I thought of the bird's age. He is a bird wizard, after all. Photographed off Half Moon Bay, CA.

Look at those broad wings, that big bill. It almost looks like a goddamn skua. Aside from the birds's build, the strongly barred rump/uppertail coverts and large number of white primary shafts help identify it as a Pomarine.

There was no shortage of smallish terns offshore this fall, but every single one I got a good look at was a Common, like this bird. I prefer Arctics, but its not like Common is an easy bird to get from shore around here, so I will take them. Photographed off Half Moon Bay, CA.

There was a massive flock of Sooty Shearwaters hanging out in Half Moon Bay for several weeks this fall; behold the masses.

Here it is, everyone's third favorite gull! I won't even speak of the two that come first, for I have never seen them. Photographed off Bodega Bay, CA.

My, what a wing pattern you have Sabine's Gull. Thank you for making it so bloody easy to identify you in flight from great distances, and being so aesthetically pleasing from short distances.

Buller's Shearwaters were lacking this fall. I demand more Buller's Shearwaters. That's two years in a row where these birds were a pain in the ass to find offshore. Photographed off Bodega Bay, CA.

What was that? You want to see more COMMON TERNS??? Well, I'm kind of surprised. This is indeed a common bird in some places, one you need not venture offshore for. I would have thought you wanted to see a different species, but I won't deny you, dear reader. This is a wonderfully typical HY Common Tern. Photographed off Bodega Bay, CA.

Eh, not a crush, but it's always nice to get seabird shots backed by the horizon.

Speaking of goddamn skuas, here is a South Polar Skua...a bird that is not unusual here, but one that always commands attention. I hope I get to see them on their breeding grounds someday, where they are a decidedly different beast...which is a penguin-slayer, for the uninitiated. Photographed off Bodega Bay, CA.

While I didn't enjoy much luck with tubenoses this fall, I did get to briefly enjoy this totally uncooperative but pleasantly rare Guadalupe Murrelet, only the second I've ever seen. I'm not sure if I could have identified this bird without the help of have a DSLR; talk about a clutch birding tool. Photographed off Bodega Bay, CA.

Jaegers are exceptional-looking birds when they have their flamboyant tails attached. This soothing Parasitic Jaeger made a close pass by the boat off Bodega Bay, CA.

Long-tailed Jaegers are one of my favored seabirds, and I still feel strongly about this one although it does not fall in the "flamboyant" category. Also, it's always good to get a full "jaeger slam" into a single post. Photographed off Bodega Bay, CA.

My last boat of the year did a couple laps around Southeast Farallon Island (SEFI), the epic seabird colony and vagrant trap that sits about 18 miles off the coast. While waiting for boobies I saw some nerds up by the hideous choade-like lighthouse.

Look at this place! Fuck.

With El Nino raging, it has been a banner year for boobies off the California coast. SEFI has supported a healthy roost of Brown Boobies for the entire year. This was a very rare bird just a few short years ago, but things are changing.

Here is a female, almost in adult plumage. She still has to lose some of that mottling on the belly and maybe some brown in the wing linings.

The Brown Booby roost has also been home to this adult Blue-footed Booby (on the right, obvi) for some time now. There has been little follow-up to the massive Blue-footed Booby invasion California experienced two years ago, despite high sea surface temperatures continuing seemingly just about everywhere. Of course, California birders will be wondering about the Northern Gannet that has been here for years now...well, we missed it! Was it seen the day before? Yes. Was it seen that day? Yes. Was it seen the next day? Of course.  Why does this matter?  Well, I have never seen it! Can I tell you how sick I am of missing that bird over and over again? Year after godforsaken year? UGGGGGGHHHHHHH. The gannet hates me. I, in turn, hate the gannet. It is officially my California Nemesis Bird. Have you ever had a Nemesis Bird that was actually a single individual bird? Christ, I am being driven into a manic rage just thinking about it. Hopefully it will start showing up on Alcatraz again next spring so I can continue dipping on it from shore. So no luck with the gannet, but I did manage a life bird the previous day...and the previous weekend...more on that to come.