Fall Pelagics: Blue Whales, Whalebows, Murre[let]s, The Burden

And just like that, the pelagic season has come and gone. I already covered my first two trips of the year, so I figure I can go ahead and wrap up the September and October trips I did out of Half Moon Bay.

The September trip was full of marine life...there was a lot going on offshore. Humpback Whales were present in large numbers, frequently giving great looks near the boat.

Lots and lots of Humpbacks. The sea was boiling with whales. The sea wasn't boiling whales though, climate change isn't that bad yet.

We had nice looks at Blue Whales as well. This is always a major bonus of any trip. I don't think a lot of participants know that this is something they can realistically see on trips here, so there is always an atmosphere of bewildered excitement when one of these surfaces near the boat.

It's always a great honor to get good looks at the largest animal to have ever existed. That's some heavy shit...literally.

The day was bright and sunny, and ultimately bad for photography; I have no crushes to offer you. More importantly, we had good numbers of skuas and jaegers, and hundreds of Sabine's Gulls, the most I had ever seen. The western U.S. has been plagued with them this fall, both offshore, along the coast and on interior lakes; there must have been a bumper crop of them this year.

The real drama came when a Hawaiian Petrel was called out...I was quite convinced (ok, totally convinced) I saw it at one point, but when I chimped my photos, all I could find was a goddamn Pink-footed Shearwater. Great confusion ensued...people were calling it out repeatedly...eventually (after the trip), we all realized that no one had gotten a photo of it and only a couple of the leaders really saw it in the first place. That said, when I was going through pictures for this post, the very first photo of the "petrel" I took shows a bird that...well, it looks like a Hawaiian Petrel, not a Pink-footed Shearwater, but it's so bloody poor that I don't think anything can be conclusively made of it. Did I actually see a Hawaiian Petrel, but it pulled the ol' fucking switcharoo with a shearwater? I do not, and cannot know. This is all very typical, as it would be a life bird and is one of the motivating factors for me to keep getting on boats. So close...so fucking close.

Unlike Hawaiian Petrels, which hate me, the local Northern Gannet loves me now and lets me look at it all the time. Here it is majestically surfing Mavericks.

On the first weekend of October, I led my last pelagic of the year. We were pleasantly surprised early on by the numbers of Black-vented Shearwaters (year bird!) we ran into. Black-vented Shearwaters are very unpredictable north of Monterey Bay, so we're always happy to get them on Half Moon Bay trips.

These little homely shearwaters mostly prefer to spend their lives in inshore waters, though some will venture out over the shelf edge.

Rhinoceros Auklets occasionally allow close approach by the boat, a refreshing change from how they normally react.

It's hard to take interesting scenery photos with no land in sight, but I think this uncropped photo has it all. The excitement of cruising up on a giant feeding frenzy of whales (complete with whalebows), sea lions and seabirds does not ever wane.

One of these murres is not like the other. In fact, one of these murres is not a murre.

2016 is, for me, the year that murres and murrelets come together. I have seen a great many murres and a lot of murrelets, but before this year I've never seen a murrelet of any kind seek the company of a murre. Earlier this fall I found a Marbled Murrelet hiding in the middle of a murre flock next to Sail Rock (famed gannet perch), and then there was this Scripps's Murrelet doing a good impression of a baby murre...what in the fuck is the world coming to?

It's not that unusual I suppose, but novel nonetheless. A pair of Scripps's Murrelets were the most unusual species on this day; they are a difficult bird to come by in October. This was actually the one and only "slow" day I've had offshore this fall...we had no storm-petrels, and for my third trip ever, no Black-footed Albatross. We were in weird, gross brownish water almost the whole time, so I suspect the bulk of the local seabird population were elsewhere.

Lots of Red Phalaropes offshore this fall, outnumbering Red-necked on some days. Most mellow.

Dall's Porpoise...such a good mammal, one of my favorites. This is another one of those species that is neither rare or expected on boat trips here, you just have to hope the boat will blunder into a pod. They do bowride, so you can get great looks, but they are agonizing to try and photograph because they are so fast. Most dolphins are slow and slothful in comparison. You would think that a mammal as big as a person would not be so difficult to crush 15 feet away, but such is life.

The Economy of Style has been absolutely rampant in this post, have you noticed? Black, gray, white, brown, plus a dash of color on the head of the gannet and the bill of the auklet...all part of pelagic birding. Well, no bird off our coast pulls off a limited palette better than a Buller's Shearwater...unfortunately this was another down year for them (locally, anyway) so we only saw a handful, and yet again I will go another year without Flesh-footed Shearwater...unexpected this is. And, unfortunate.

Unfortunate that I know the truth?

No! Unfortunate that you rushed to face him. That incomplete was your training. Not ready for the burden were you...

Sorry. Got a little carried away there. Sometimes dipping on Flesh-footed Shearwater feels like learning Darth Vader is your father.

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?