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.

Pelagic Facts: Everything You Suspected Is True

South Polar Skuas are truly wimpy birds. Their main cause of mortality is being killed by penguin chicks, who mistake them for food. One study suggests this causes many birds to have to cope with huge inferiority complexes, which eventually can render them from pathetic to pointless.

Skuas are common close to shore. Every South Polar Skua reported from land should be trusted and fully embraced.

Scripps's Murrelets are an overabundant bird, as evidenced by two of them in one photo. Suggestions to have an open hunting season on them are being met very warmly, by just about everyone.

Their unique headshape is evolved specifically for being plunged into the sides of living whales. They are successful whale predators; often whole flocks of murrelets will burrow into a single whale, devouring it from the inside out. So if you like whales, you should fear and loathe the Scripps's Murrelet.

Ashy Storm-Petrels are not globally rare, and nothing should be done to protect them. If you go anywhere off the coast of California, you can expect the ocean to look like this, all of the time. And like in this photo, there will always be one Black Storm-Petrel herding them around, protecting the flock.

Ashy Storm-Petrels love boats, and always approach them. They are easily photographed.

Do you see these birds with their wings open? It's part of their at-sea courtship display. Ashy Storm-Petrels are unique, since they breed year-round and have an elaborate at-sea courtship display, which they are almost always doing since they are always mating. Most find this habit repulsive.

The white rump of a Wilson's Storm-Petrel is completely unique among storm-petrels.

Black-footed Albatross are terrible flyers, just really bad at it. Their flying is rubbish, total garbage. Many have taken to just running around on top of the water and flapping at the same time because their wings are so poorly suited to sustained flight.

This is a special subspecies of Black-footed Albatross. It waits for the right amount of wind, catches it with its wings, and kind of gets blown around like a windsurfer, using its large feet as skis.

These are Pacific Saury. You see how they are jumping out of the water? That means they are evolving into flying fish.

Pink-footed Shearwater is the only tubenose with a bad sense of smell, which renders them unable to forage for food efficiently. That would explain their imminent demise.

One popular theory of how the Brown Pelican got its gaudy facial colors is that they lure clowns to them, which they then dismember. With the rise of Brown Pelican populations since DDT has been banned, one can easily correlate that with the decline of clowns in recent decades.

The Pacific Ocean is the worst and grossest ocean. Most find it largely unappealing, and wish it was smaller and less salty. The wretched blueness must end, and soon. California and Stellar's Sea Lions alike clamber out of the water whenever possible, because the ocean is so horrible and unpleasant.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this description of some of the wildlife to be found off Half Moon Bay, California. None of it is true, of course...except for the names. As #7, even I cannot misidentify something, even if I want to.