Boat Season Has Arrived

When August arrives, birders across the continent have one thing on their obsessive brains: shorebirds.  This Global Birder Ranking System #7 U.S. birder?  Two things...shorebirds, and seabirds.  Oh, and another thing, pointing and screaming bird names as loud as possible with a captive audience.

Of course, there are always seabirds Out There, but the end of July heralds the beginning of pelagic season.  Away from Monterey Bay and Half Moon Bay, there is no where else on the west coast where boats depart on the regular to troll for tubenoses, for alcids, for boobies, for jaegers...you get the picture.  I am lucky enough to be able to get on a lot of these trips (mostly out of Half Moon), and spend time with this impressive and difficult group of birds...the birds of The Deep. In anticipation of my first west coast seabirding trip of the year (and yet another shot at Hawaiian Petrel, a bird I need), I thought I would cobble together some photos from past July and August trips. As always, if you are thinking about doing your first west coast pelagic trip, or your first ever pelagic trip, what are you waiting for? Get on a boat!

But these anxious feelings are nothing different from any other year.  What is different about this year is El Nino...not a speculated one, not a possible one, but a real one.  The nonbirder associates El Nino (sorry for the lack of tilde) with rain, the west coast seabirder associates it with rare birds. Weird seabirds have already put in appearances in California this year...a Red-footed Booby, a Nazca Booby, a Kelp Gull, a Bridled Tern...and none of those birds were even seen out to sea!  So who knows what will be out there?  Frigatebirds have already been showing up in SoCal, another encouraging sign.  Fingers crossed for Cook's Petrels, an El Nino special, but I will be happy with a Hawaiian (no fucked up ocean currents required), which is very much a bird of August.

Late summer is a good time for albatross, and Black-footed Albatross are almost always out there this time of year.  Unlike many other seabirds we see, if you see a Black-footed Albatross, you are going to get great looks.  It's also a good time for Laysan Albatross (top photo) as well, but a word of warning: 75% of Laysan Albatross called out on boat trips end up being Western Gulls.  Don't become part of that gruesome statistic...caution is warranted.  

Shearwater diversity does not tend to be very high at the beginning of pelagic season, but Sooty and Pink-footed are never missed, assuming the boat gets out of the harbor.  An early Buller's or Flesh-footed is never out of the question, and of course there are a great many other possibilities.

Small numbers of Northern Fulmars are often found on these summer trips, and the birds usually look something like this. They are ragged. They are haggard...and lets face it, they are godawful. Hideous. It's amazing they can even fly, they are molting so hard. Fulmars later in fall are very respectable in appearance and flight capabilities, not so much our summer lingerers. Luckily, if you've never seen a fulmar before, they are not at all afraid of the boat, so you can wonder at their horrible glory from close range.

August is a great month for jaegers, especially Long-tailed, who often will still be retaining their brilliant extendo-tail. The bulk of southbound Long-taileds seem to pass through from August to mid-September, so now is a good time to get them. The always-popular Skua Slam is always within reach this time of year as well.

Black (above) and Ashy Storm-Petrels are the expected storm-petrels early in the season, though Wilson's are not unusual. With El Nino brewing, this could be a good year to find Least Storm-Petrel this far north, though probably not this early. That said, the birding legend they call Papa Echo Lima recently saw some from shore down La Jolla way, which portends great things for those who want to see them up here.

Fact: 75% of Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels claimed on trips are actually phalaropes...but if you are one who warrants caution, then that 75% is not for you. These are Red Phalaropes, the less common, chubbier, more desirable phalarope.

Speaking of chubby, Cassin's Auklets are expected on trips throughout the summer and fall, though their numbers vary.  Unlike albatross and fulmars, Cassin's Auklets hate boats, so getting good looks at them can be stressful.

I know this isn't a compelling photo, but I think it sums up what looking at murrelets can be like over the deep.  Scripps's Murrelets (above) are the expected species, though last summer Craveri's were seen on a number of boats in July and early August. I'm hoping they come back for an encore this year.

Oh yeah, crippling rarities can show up any time...it just takes a shitload of luck, and maximizing your time on the water. This Salvin's Albatross was the star Vague Runt (albeit one not so runty) of the pelagic season last year, and things have never been the same.

All photos were taken offshore from Bodega Bay and Half Moon Bay.

Y2K14: Fall Of The Nemeses

Xantus's Hummingbird was one of my first life birds of 2014. Hopefully we will get another one in California someday, but without the drama and dissolving of friendships that the British Columbia bird caused. Todos Santos, MX. 

Birders...I write you on New Year's Eve, just hours before 2014 is shat into temporal oblivion and 2015 hits us on our collective head like a giant ACME brand anvil. This NYE is guaranteed to be the worst in years...tonight there will no bourbon. No bastards. No birds. I have contracted a nasty strain of sickness from Tennessee a few days ago, and I am forced to lay low. There will be no glory for me tonight, nor revelry nor merriment...there will be only NyQuil.  Forecasts of debauchery have been cast aside, and replaced with forecasts of boredom, mediocrity, and FOMO. That said, tomorrow is a new year list! Hopefully by foregoing any raging tonight I will feel like a human being in the next day or two, and the birding (and compensatory raging) can commence.

Those of you familiar with the Birdosphere know what happens at the end of every year...the dreaded yet inevitable year in review. Since I am too wracked with illness to do any actual birding or do anything else fun, I'm going to push this post out today. Hopefully it will make a good read, and we will see you again soon.


Pinkest Lifers of the Year Y2K14: On my way to Texas last March, I made a small but very important detour in New Mexico to get a couple long-awaited lifer Rosy-finches, Brown-capped (above) and Black. Thank the bird gods this place exists. Sandia Crest Lodge, NM.

Best Birding of the Year Y2K14: Not really a shocker here...the award goes to spring in South Texas. Are the birding spots crowded? Yes. Are you surrounded by Geri? Always. Are you required to elbow rabid photogs in the ribs? Constantly.  Is there an abundance of facemelt? And you know this. The mix of "valley specialties" combined with huge numbers of migrating passerines and waterbirds (which you can often watch arrive off the Gulf, while you are birding) make for high quality birding. Hooded Warbler, South Padre Island, TX.

Most Embarrassing Nemesis Defeated Y2K14: Until this year, Eastern Screech-Owl was the most widespread and abundant U.S. bird that I needed to see. It was embarrassing, I will be the first one to admit it. I had heard them and even seen one (horribly), but had not actually had a look at one that warranted counting. That all changed in Texas this spring. Estero Llano Grande State Park, TX.

Most Nemesis Nemesis Defeated Y2K14: Cerulean Warbler was the bird I really wanted to see in Texas...or anywhere, to be honest. This is another bird that has languished on my heard-only list for many years, and I have been dying to see one for as long as I can remember. I obsessively visited South Padre Island day after bloody day in hopes of tracking one down, and was finally rewarded with a male and a female on the same day in late April. It was a memorable experience...does this ring a bell?: "Don't hurt me", he said in a feeble whimper. "I just want to see Indigo Buntings".

Texas birding was very eventful, even without any fallouts. Thanks to Nate McGowan and Tiffany Kersten for showing me around, getting me on birds, helping me drink, etc.

Crappiest Looks at a Life Bird Y2K14: Golden-cheeked Warbler
Most Crucial Inner Circle Life Bird Y2K14: Black-capped Vireo
Weirdest Life Bird Y2K14: Chuck-will's-widow
Best Heard Only Bird Y2K14: Crimson-collared Grosbeak
State With The Most Annoying Photographers Y2K14: Texas

Most Range-Restricted Nemesis Y2K14: I have spent hella time birding in southeast Arizona. I even spent a whole spring doing fieldwork there. I have heard countless Whiskered Screech-Owls...but could never see one. After years of waiting, I finally put this bird to bed (well, it was already asleep) when I saw one of the adults that would spend its days roosting in a nest cavity in Madera Canyon, across from Kubo. As nice as it was to meet this species, this was not the first life bird "Slick" would muster that day.

Weirdest Vague Runt Y2K14: After returning to the bay area from the southwest, there was some work to be done...someone from the Inner Circle had finally leaked the location of the nesting Common Black-Hawk in Sonoma County. Many Bothans died to bring us this information.  This absurdly rare bird has not only been living here for years, it has actually been nesting...with a Red-shouldered Hawk. I got to see the whole family...the hybrid offspring was truly bizarre, I would love to see it as an adult someday. Photographed at Super Secret Inner Circle Location, Sonoma County, CA. Don't check eBird or anything.

Best CA Bird Y2K14: Rustic Bunting. You all know about this bird. I don't have photos (maybe next year?), I'm just stoked that I actually saw it. The birding gods have truly smiled on me in order to keep this bird in Golden Gate Park for almost two weeks. I left the bay area the day the bird had originally been found...I almost quit birding, but luckily the bird decided to winter here. So I'm still birding.

Worst Dip Y2K14: I guess I'll give this award to San Francisco's Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher, but 100% of the birders who chased it were met only with failure, so I don't feel that bad. However, the Brambling wintering in Arcata is causing significant mental anguish...that bird showed up the day after I was last in Arcata, and it is still taunting me.

Nerdiest Birder Gathering Y2K14: This Machine Nate, Flycatcher Jen, The Laurence and Seagull Steve, all aboard the same pelagic trip. It was an unholy union of bird bloggers, and I still feel the residual shame.

Most Awkward Birding Event Y2K14: In response to mentioning some distant Swainson's Hawks, a man at a Harlingen, TX, birding site told me, "there's something else I'd like to get a closer look at", and then offered to orally pleasure me. He was really persistent about it too, talking about how skilled he was, and eventually threw his hands in the air (seriously) and gave me the "your loss" look when I kept turning him down. So if you're a dude and you're into that sort of thing, go bird Hugh Ramsey Nature Park. If your'e not into that sort of thing, don't make eye contact with anyone who isn't wearing binoculars.

Vague Runt of the Year Y2K14: Salvin's Albatross. Aside from the sheer rarity of this very majestic bird, the incredible amount of luck that went into seeing it is still difficult for me to wrap my mind around. Half Moon Bay, CA.

Hoped-for Lifer of the Year Y2K14: This is a weird category...but so what? Birding is weird. Anyways, the winner of this category is Guadalupe Murrelet. The water was very, very warm off central and northern California this year, which led to very different (and generally less birdy) conditions than the ones we encountered in 2013. That said, the warm water brought me life Craveri's and Guadalupe Murrelets, which is exactly what I asked Santa for when rumors of El Nino abounded last summer. Photographed off Bodega Bay, CA.

Honorable Crush Y2K14: Eurasian Wigeon. Eurasian Wigeons are not particularly rare here, but I have never crushed one so hard before. Photographed in Thousand Oaks, CA.

Strangest Birding Event of Y2K14: The Murrelet Incident. The murrelet continues to have believers, by the way...the Incident may yet still be unfolding.

Most Popular BB&B Post of Y2K14: Swallowgate.

Best New Birding Blog of Y2K14: The Birder's Conundrum.


Comeback Birding Blog of Y2K14: Reservoir Cats.

Honorable Vague Runt Y2K14: LeConte's Sparrow. Why hello LeConte's Sparrow! You are so brightly colored and enthusiastic...you must possess a real Positive Mental Attitude. Thank you for being so brave and confiding, unlike every other member of your species I have ever seen. Abbott's Lagoon, Marin County, CA.

20 Years In The Game: Never Stop Birding...Sentimental HJs...Birds Remembered

Look at all these nerds. Although I am currently retired from bizarre field jobs, they have done a lot for me (and my life list). After the long and glorious LBJ days came to an end in Humboldt County, this was my first job...slavishly censusing Burrowing Owls for Jeff Manning (of "Two Jeffs One Cup" fame) and his mysterious dog Palouse in the Imperial Valley. Those times were good times, and things have never been the same.

As a birder, this month was special for me. Not because I achieved any sort of listing milestone or saw a particularly rare bird (groan), but because I realized that I've now been birding for 20 years. Of course there are a lot of birders out there who have been birding that long (and substantially longer), but I would wager that most of them are not 32. Let's face it...those people are old. OLD. One day I will probably be OLD as well, but other than an increasingly large beer gut and a decreasing amount of hair, I feel pretty good about myself, and I intend to enjoy the waning days of youth.  At any rate, this is truly an anniversary of an incredibly nerdy magnitude, and really, really embarrassing.

When I started birding as a stupid 12-year old, once I started it never occurred to me that I would ever stop birding. It was too good, even if I was doomed to be a nerd for the rest of my life. I became a bird addict, a depraved junkie who just cannot get enough...maybe not the kind who would give an HJ in a back alley in exchange for a life bird...ok FULL DISCLOSURE I actually invented that whole bird-hj bartering system and that is totally me. Buddies, I'm still waiting for all those HJs...

Right. Buddies. While I don't have the endless financial resources that some have to pour into their state and county lists (surely there is something better to do with that $$$...or is there?), I have made lots of friends on the way. And friends, to a birder, are worth more than any Code 5 rarity. Birders, as I'm sure you have noticed, don't have many friends, due to the weirdness in their brains and debilitating lack of social skills. Luckily somewhere between 12 and 32 I managed to trick some people into liking me and now I have many a buddy. So now when I run into an old friend at a bar, they greet me joyous cries of "Number 7!", whether they are a birder or not. I have a girlfriend, Booby Brittany, who forced us to chase a Little Bunting last winter because she knew my soul would shrivel up and die if I didn't (she also has a thing for Sibes, though). It has been an honor and a privilege to have met so many good people on this godawful, shameful journey. So to all my friends I've made while working weird jobs (birders and otherwise) that made life tolerable (birded/drank with me) and to everyone who has lent me a couch or showed me a lifer while on some fucked up birding road trip or were down to be dragged around through the Arcata Bottoms at incredibly slow speeds...you know who you are. I owe you a big fat HJ.

I guess you want to see some pictures or something. I can't share images from the 90's (although I do have slides somewhere) and from most of the 2000's, so I figured I would at least break out the old hard drives and post some random pictures chronicling some more recent Great Successes.

In February 2009, I ditched my desk job in Concord, CA, for a volunteer position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Midway Atoll. I wanted to get to know seabirds...and I got to know them quite well, particularly albatross. Truth be told, they are quite addicting. Anyways, though not really a seabird (although it does overfly vast distances of ocean), one of the birds I met on Midway was the Bristle-thighed Curlew, which is never something I had realistically thought I would ever see up to that point. This is the last North American bird to have it's breeding grounds discovered, and even there it is not very common. Saw hella on Midway though.

After Midway, I went out to Pennsylvania to work with Bat Conservation International, where I got my first taste of the wind energy industry and what it can do to birds and bats. After I finished there, I figured "Well, this is as close as I've ever been to Florida, so I might as well go". So I drove down to the Everglades, and picked up a quantity of lifers. Wood Stork was not one of them, but any place you can go where Wood Storks lurk by the roadside is a good place. Did you know they have pink feet? Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, FL.

In the spring of 2010, I took a job in southeast Arizona, one of my favorite places to bird. It's great getting paid to look at birds where thousands of other birders drool about visiting. We lived in Florida Canyon much of the time, and put up a bunch of hummingbird feeders; this Violet-crowned Hummingbird was one of the more unexpected birds to show up.

After Arizona, I thought it would be best to move to the Aleutian Islands for the summer. I got to meet many Asian strays and a shitload of amazing seabirds, but one of my favorite moments was finding this Ancient Murrelet chick after a night of mist-netting Whiskered Auklets. This little chick, just a few days old, was going balls-out for the water, leaping astonishing distances into the air like a goddamned kangaroo in order to get over the seemingly impenetrable boulder field on the beach. We could hear a parent calling to it from the water. I have no idea what terrain had to be conquered or how far that chick had to go to get to where I saw it, but I have no doubt that it made it to the water.

In 2011, I thought it was time to get weird. I completed a road trip through eastern Mexico, which was rad, although not after getting robbed by a cartel...which was not rad. A month after that incident I was back in Mexico because I am crazy, counting migrating raptors for the spring in Chavarrillo, one of best places on the continent for seeing birds of prey during spring migration. I was enamored with the swarms of Mississippi Kites that moved through later in the spring. Que chido.

After Mexico it was off to North Dakota to do Piping Plover monitoring for Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge. It was a weird scene (though not nearly as weird as Mexico), but the birding was great. We had field sites all over the place and some of them had good numbers of Baird's Sparrows, which worked out quite well for me since they are one of the most lusted-after sparrows in the U.S. This bird was on private property, but if you ever get out that way, look for them at Lostwood or Medicine Lake NWR over in eastern Montana. PS fuck frakking.

In January 2012 we were evicted from the Space Station, our squatter house in San Francisco, which sent me packing north for a doomy road trip. In Washington I finally got to meet the iconic Snowy Owl, one of the best birds in existence.

My most-crushed Vague Runt is this drake Tufted Duck, which has been wintering at Lake Merritt, a few minutes from my house, for years. Hopefully he comes back soon so I can crush him for the millionth time. You want to join the crush party? Come visit!

In summer of 2012 I found myself living in San Diego, toiling with Least Terns and Snowy Plovers for the San Diego Zoo, and living in a cabin in Jim and Jim's backyard. Jim and Jim were great landlords, and their backyard was an excellent place to party. Many good times back there. I managed to survive the toxic birding scene, did a lot of great birding and made a few buddies...and I still like terns and plovers. Here is a young Snowy Plover chick that hopefully is a lot bigger and more feathered now.

At the end of 2013 I migrated south to Costa Rica for a few weeks, which is still being chronicled on BB&B because I am so damn lazy...but not as lazy as Don Mastwell, who still needs to enter a bunch of eBird checklists. Anyways, the birding was facemelting. If you are contemplating taking your first trip down that way, don't let some hippie nonbirder friend of yours convince you to go to some other country down there instead where everything has been clearcut to death. Here is an Emerald (Blue-throated) Toucanet from La Cinchona.

Fast forward to this spring, when I moved to the Lower Rio Grande Valley for another couple of wind energy projects. I had ample time to bird and get to the coast, where I really got a heavy dose of migration in the eastern U.S. for the first time. I didn't really know what picture to put up to represent the birding there (a crowd of annoying/clueless photographers would have been appropriate) but I think this crushed Indigo Bunting from South Padre Island sums it up.

What better way to finish than with the rarest Vague Runt I've ever seen? A beloved albatross, no less? I've lead a lot of pelagic trips the last couple years, and this has been the bird of all birds. Thank you Salvin's Albatross, you were my destiny. Half Moon Bay, CA.

Pelagic Season Begins: July 26, Half Moon Bay

July 26 was my first pelagic trip of the year, leading for Shearwater Journeys again out of Half Moon Bay. Little did I know, it would be a date that would live on in infamy...the birding would reach a crescendo, although I did not expect it.

I was stoked to start doing some boat trips this year, as since I've returned from Texas I've hardly gone birding. I was also interested in what we might find offshore so early in the "fall", since I've never done a July pelagic before. It was (and is) Hawaiian Petrel season, and a boat the previous week had several Craveri's Murrelet, a bird I yearned for and usually does not get much north of San Diego. After seeing some guillemots in the harbor we plunged into the inshore fog bank, and headed out to sea. Eventually the fog broke and we started getting into some birds...a couple Scripps's Murrelets, a flyby Craveri's (which I missed...ouch), and then a Laysan Albatross appeared ahead of the boat.

I wouldn't call Laysan Albatross "rare" offshore here, but they are certainly rareish...they are not recorded as frequently as, say, Flesh-footed Shearwater, but they are never totally unexpected. Since I spent three and a half months with them on Midway Atoll, they hold a special place in my heart, so it's always good to check in with them.

Soon we were in deeper water, where Black-footed Albatross are plentiful. I never get tired of these birds (they get posted to BB&B almost more than anything else) and although they have only about 3 colors, they can make for some creative photography. They are well known for their big bodies, bill bills and big wingspan, but how about those big fuckoff feet?

Like many waterfowl, albatross will use their humungo feet for brakes and steering when making a quick landing.

I dig the long wake this gooney is leaving behind.

Of course, later in the day we got to see this bird, this rarity of rarities, which you probably know about already. If not, get the full story right here. I'm recovering, slowly. I'm still fighting myopathy and I've just been able to start eating solid food again.

The AOU did just recognize Salvin's Albatross as a full species, less than two weeks after our sighting. Thanks guys. Still marveling that we got to see this bird, and so well at that.

In less majestic and more disgusting news, we had a fair number of Northern Fulmars offshore that day, almost all of which looked like shit. Look at this bird. It's awful.

Several of these dark-morph birds were so worn and bleached that they had white mantles. Look at those horrible primaries! The decrepit tail! It's amazing these birds can even get airborne.

As expected for late July, most of the shearwaters we ran into were Pink-footed (above) and Sooty. We did get one Buller's (the best of all shearwaters), which was on the early side. Most shearwaters now are in heavy wing molt and have big chunks missing from their primaries and secondaries. At least they don't look like hideous fulmars.

This is the same bird. They'll be looking better in a month or so.

There were dozens of Common Murre dads leading their fuzzy, flightless chicks around. Maybe the murres had a good breeding season on the Farallones?

Another murre family scoots out of the way of the boat. I will admit that on this day, I committed a misidentification at sea. I mistook a Orca dorsal fin for a Humpback Whale pectoral fin. Embarrassing, I know. This may sound like an odd thing to do for some of you, but a humpback pec fin is similar in size and shape (but not color...) to a male Orca dorsal fin, and humpbacks frequently lie on their sides or on their backs and will wave a fin in the air, for reasons that only other humpback whales could possibly understand. I feel no shame...mostly because it wasn't a bird. Steller's Sea Lion was also a nice bonus mammal.

Oh, I did see a pair of Craveri's that day, so everything is fine. I'll be on Sunday's pelagic out of Half Moon Bay, so maybe I'll see some of you then. The marine forecast looks very good for alcids and finding rafts of storm-petrels this weekend...it's also worth mentioning that there recently have been 4 species of Sulids in San Mateo and San Francisco waters!!! Not baffling, but welcomed.

Meeting a Mega: The Story of the Salvin's Albatross

The Chase Is On

We were somewhere north of Pioneer Canyon, cruising through San Francisco waters on a gray afternoon, when the New Captain Pete abruptly made a 180 degree turn. I suspected something was up, but could not have predicted the events that would unfold in the next two hours. As I was staring out at a sprinkling of Black-footed Albatross and Pink-footed Shearwaters, Debi Shearwater walked up to me.

Debi: Did Abe tell you?
Steve: No...tell me what?
Debi: The other boat has a Salvin's Albatross.
Steve: *blank stare, prolonged silence, various expletives*
Debi: They are still on it. We are going for it.

That's how it all started. At first, I did not even have an emotional response to this news. "Salvin's Albatross" was not really registering. I had completely forgotten that Alvaro Jamarillo was on the Hulicat, leading a pelagic trip in the same area that we were in, and Salvin's Albatross was so far off my radar that it bordered on being a brainbird. As Abe Borker and I discussed how things were unfolding, the stoke started to build. Quickly news spread around that the other boat was going to stay on the bird for as long as possible, which was mighty fine and generous of them. It inspired great hope. Debi made the risky (and in hindsight, absolutely correct) executive decision to go for the bird, despite the significant extra cost in fuel that would need to be covered and the fact that it very well might not be there by the time we arrived on the scene.

However, the stoke that was rapidly building up was something I was trying to suppress...we were an hour from where we needed to be, and if I was an especially rare albatross I wouldn't necessarily be loafing in the same place for so long. Shortly after I made a pessimistic comment to Abe Borker about the bird probably leaving before we got there, Abe returned with the news that the bird had flown. The stoke that had been building from a few sparks to a forest fire-sized inferno quickly became extinguished, and the inevitable fear and loathing began to set in. "Well", Abe said unconvincingly, "if it was easy, then it wouldn't be any fun". I disagreed.

Against all odds, a few minutes later Linda Terrill came back with the news that Al's boat had found the bird again. I was stunned. Abe and I quickly came to the consensus that easy things were actually fun. The New Captain Pete was hurtling south now with surprising speed. The chase was on. Finally we could see the other boat on the horizon, and everyone made their way up to the bow. I said what everyone was thinking: "We can see their boat. The Salvin's is right next to their boat. If the bird took off right now, this would be such a bad dip for us that it would become birding legend." A collective shudder was had.

Finally we got close enough to the Hulicat to see the huge raft of albatross loafing next to it. They radioed to us that the bird was off their port bow, on the fringes of one of the groups of Black-footed Albatross. Todd McGrath got on it briefly, then lost it in the swells. Tension was building now, as we sloshed up and down. The bow was crowded and birders were straining. "Does anyone have the bird???", was the question that echoed back and forth among the crowd.

At long last, I spotted the bird as it popped up from a deep trough to the crest of a swell. Slowly but surely, as we lurked closer and closer to the bird, more and more people got on it. Finally the bird was easily visible, and everyone on our boat could see it. The bird was massive, noticeably larger than Black-footed Albatross (typically the largest seabird we see offshore) and had a particular look on it's face that was completely different than the albatross of the north Pacific; Black-footed and older Laysans have very soft expressions, and Short-tailed have this alertly-smug thing going where they appear keenly aware of how wonderful they are. This bird, belonging to a genus I was totally unfamiliar with, had a strikingly stern look, very different from the other white-headed albatross species of this hemisphere. It interacted with several Black-footed Albatross (which are very curious birds), sometimes with mild aggression and sometimes with apparent mutual interest. It flew short distances a couple times, but generally just loafed on the water's surface. Eventually the Hulicat moved on with their trip and we enjoyed the bird for another 15 minutes before it got bored, took to the air, and leisurely zigzagged toward the southwestern horizon.

What The Hell Is A Salvin's Albatross?

The AOU currently considers Salvin's Albatross to be a member of the Shy Albatross complex, which consists of four different subspecies. However, it is very likely that this is about to change, with Shy Albatross being broken into White-capped Albatross, Chatham Albatross and Salvin's Albatross. In a bizarre coincidence, I believe Alvaro of all people wrote the original proposal some years ago to split Shy Albatross. Other ornithological heavyweights already accept this split, and you will not find "Shy Albatross" in eBird.

Salvin's Albatross regularly occur from southeast Australia eastward to the west coast of South America, northward into Peruvian waters. The majority of the population breeds on the Bounty Islands, off New Zealand. A Shy-type albatross seen off Bodega Bay, CA, by a Shearwater Journeys boat some years ago was suspected of being Salvin's, but was subsequently identified as Chatham Albatross. The only other records in the northern hemisphere of this species are from Alaska and Midway Atoll, making this bird a probable first state record and only the second off North America. Amazingly, this bird completes California's trifecta of the Shy complex, as Chatham and White-capped have already been recorded in our waters.

Will Things Ever Be The Same?

It was an epic bird and an epic day. The collective agonized groan of tens of thousands of birders across North America could be heard shortly after we got back to the dock, as they read the shocking news of this sighting that had set the birding community ablaze. Those who had passed on the opportunity to be on the water to meet this bird (and their destiny?) that day have been plunged into a catatonic depression, and have not been heard from since. Props to Al and those aboard the Hulicat for finding the bird, spreading the news and keeping it close until we got there, and to Debi for doing everything that needed to be done to get the New Captain Pete there in time for us to enjoy fantastic looks of this MEGA. Things will never be the same.

You may remember this post from just a few weeks back. I'm not going to say that it is all happening as I have foreseen...but it has been so far. Although this is mere speculation, what hasn't been talked about much is that this bird could potentially be sitting off our coast because of El Niño conditions building off the coast of South America, which is already having effects on seabirds within the normal range of Salvin's Albatross . With pelagic season just kicking off here, who knows what else will show up? We also had a pair of Scripps's Murrelets and multiple Craveri's Murrelets (lifer #2 that day), both of which are associated with warmer sea surface temperatures. Craveri's are a Mexican species that have not been recorded this far north in ten years...do you see where I am going with this? What a great start to what might end up being a singular season of seabirding.