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!

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.

The Homely Shearwater, Enhanced Seabirds, A Single Boob

Another season of pelagics is in the can. What to say about this year? Well, things got interesting quick with the Salvin's Albatross (BINGO) and Craveri's Murrelets in July, but in August the murrelets kind of disappeared. Hawaiian Petrels made appearances in Monterey Bay and Half Moon Bay, neither of which I saw, so I will have to wait at least another year to meet that bird, which is totally fucked. Brown, Blue-footed and Masked Boobies all put in appearances around these parts, and the infamous Northern Gannet still roosts on the Farallones, which is infuriating. A Guadalupe Murrelet in September off Bodega Bay was an excellent bird, and a boat trip I did not attend off Half Moon Bay also had a Guadalupe and Red-billed Tropicbird. A Cory's Shearwater off Fort Bragg that I would have liked to have seen was a state ***MEGA***, the only "nearshore" pelagic bird that came close to the Salvin's in magnitude of rarity. Some really good shit was found waaaaayyyyyyy offshore, but unless you are a seabird observer on a NOAA boat, you aren't going to see what lurks that far beyond the horizon.

Right. Three pelagic lifers for me this year, which is more than I could have hoped for. Here is some coverage of my last boats of the season, one out of Monterey and one out of Half Moon Bay.

With the huge mass of warm water that was up here for a couple months, there were thousands of Black-vented Shearwaters in Monterey this fall. Some were seen all the way up in Humboldt the other day, which is cray cray.

I'm just going to say it...I have difficulty talking about Black-vented Shearwaters. Out of all the tubenoses that occur off California, this is often the easiest one to see from shore. They are afraid of deep water. They like warm water, are small, and breed in Mexico. What else is there to say? They are the most slovenly-adorned shearwater I have ever seen so I'm not exactly brimming with compliments for them. For the record, I do like them and I wish them the best, it's just not a bird anyone seems to be equipped to expound upon.

Ok, I've got something. This isn't unique to the species, but Black-vents have pretty awesome feet, with the upper side of the foot and "ankle" pinkish-blue, the bottom side black. I don't understand the significance of this two-tone but it pleases me.

See that crazy white-headed thing on the bottom left? That too is a Black-vented Shearwater, albeit an enhanced one.

Speaking of enhanced birds, check out the wing pattern on this South Polar Skua. Do you see something that shouldn't be there?

It might as well be a fucking Willet. Anyone care to explain the white wing bar?

This pair of mellow Sabine's Gulls were a stone's throw from the Monterey Harbor. Hella cooperative, some of the most confiding members of their species I have come across.

So neat and dainty. Some folks were having a hard time keeping it together. Too bad the lighting wasn't more conducive to crushing, but whatever.

Can't complain about getting looks like these.

Black-footed Albatross. Pretty sick molt pattern if you ask me. Lots of new goodness coming in on the head.

A couple of Humpback Whales (the lump on the left is whale #2) with attendant murres and barnacles. I think it's weird how many people are out there who have never seen a whale up close. Y'all are missing out.

This is one of my favorite photos I took this fall. To my eye, Harbor Seal looks uncannily human, somehow.

Last year, nearshore waters were saturated with Buller's Shearwaters. They were thick, and it was glorious. This year? I think I saw less than ten. Total bullshit. It seems the warm water that washed in the Black-vents and Black Storm-Petrels washed out the Buller's and Ashy Storm-Petrels.

Like last year, I managed to see exactly one booby offshore this year (I THOUGHT I WOULD SEE TWO!!!!!!). This is it. A Brown Booby. This Brown Booby puts the "brown" in Brown Booby.

Also like last year, the boob was getting harangued by gulls. Poor beleaguered booby.

The booby was on the infamous weather buoy in San Mateo County waters, right where the continental shelf starts to drop off quickly. There are always seems to be good birding by the weather buoy.

And representing the alcids, here is a Tufted Puffin. Puffins can look very dull this time of year, but you can spot that big glowing bill from a long ways away.

What happens to people who disappear at sea? I would wager MOLA MOLA happens. Doesn't this look like something that gobbles lost souls?