The Water is Wide

    "Where is your New York post?", you may ask me. Well, have no worries readers. New York will come soon but the day is not today. "Why is this post over a month later than the last?", you may also ask. Long story shortened in one sentence: life gets in the way occasionally. Anyways, without further ado, here is a recount of my first ever pelagic trip on August 2nd.

    I love the ocean. I love birds. What do you get when you put those together? Seabirds. All throughout my life, this group of beauties have captured my heart. What they lack in color they more than make up for in their elegant patterns, gracefulness, and remarkable capability of living out on the ocean for very long periods of time. Because of generous coastal upwelling, the waters off of California are extremely rich and are one of the best places in the world to see seabirds in their full glory.
    My trip was run by Shearwater Journeys, a company that has done pelagic trips since 1976 throughout the world. I arrived at Pillar Point Harbor at 6:30 am to board the ship. Upon arrival, I was highly recommended to take seasick pills and I had neglected to bring any. Oops. Thankfully, another person on deck was friendly enough to give me some. I don't know if the pills helped as they were supposed to only last for 6 hours and I didn't retake them later but I didn't feel even mildly uncomfortable during any part of the trip so I'll attest that to them!
    After a brief safety talk, we set off into the waters. It didn't take long before tons of birds were seen. Just within the harbor were hundreds of Western gulls, elegant terns, double-crested cormorants, and brown pelicans resting on the rock jetties along with some scattered black turnstones, surfbirds, and Heermann's gulls. Additionally, there was an unusually high number of pigeon guillemots so close to shore that day. Just in the harbor I got my first two yearbirds of the day: the elegant tern and the wandering tattler.

Yeah there were a lot of elegant terns. Too bad the subpar lighting combined with the boat's movement were not conducive to good photographs but you get the idea...

Tons of brown pelicans too.

Double-crested (left) and Brandt's (right) cormorants. The Brandt's cormorant is slightly larger and has blue on its throat patch while the double-crested is just orange (Don't try looking for the double crests. The birds do not often show them in my experience). Earlier in the season, the lovely blue on the Brandt's would be more extensive but as breeding season is largely over, it is far more restricted. The third type of cormorant commonly found here is the pelagic (somewhat of a misnomer as they spend most of their time near the shore) which is the smallest of the 3, being more slenderly built and having a thin, needle-like bill. Additionally, they have a very attractive greenish sheen along with a red patch on their faces and two white areas around the back during breeding season. Unfortunately although I saw a few pelagic cormorants in the day, I could not get any pictures.

Pigeon guillemots chillin' on the rocks.

Surfbird chillin' on the surf.

    My first life bird was a species that I seriously hoped I would get earlier: the common murre. These were first seen as we traveled out of Half Moon Bay into more open water and were continued to be seen for the rest of the day. My next life bird should have been a Pacific loon which was seen by many other birders but not me. What it turned out to be was another bird that I seriously hoped I would get earlier: the sooty shearwater. Like the common murre, it would continue to be seen for a good portion of the day. A humpback whale spouted a few times but did not stop to be photographed and a few harbor porpoises traveled near the boat, being just as elusive to capture on camera.

A daddy murre with its chick to the upper left. In murre society, chicks grow up fast on their rocky ledges where they were incubated, leaving after around 20 days. Being flightless at such a young age, they glide down to the ocean from their cliffs, fluttering frantically in an attempt to avoid a terrible death. From there, they spend an additional two months with their fathers at sea, learning the tricks of the trade before having to fend for themselves. 

What an attractive bird.

Just a few of the thousands of sooty shearwaters. This bird species is an amazing migrant found in oceans throughout the world. In the Pacific, they breed on small islands near New Zealand and Australia before embarking on circular path, going north to the Bering Strait before heading down the west coast of North America and then returning to breeding grounds. Although their global population is around 20 million, being one of the most numerous birds on the planet, they are declining rapidly due to fishing accidents and harvesting for food.

California sea lions

    Continuing on, I met a few more life birds well seen by most. Several pink-footed shearwaters flew by gracefully, a pair of rhinoceros auklets were resting on the water along with a pair of Cassin's auklets a while later, and the first majestic black-footed albatross flew in near the boat. Also of interest were some giant ocean sunfish sunning themselves at the surface.

Pink-footed shearwater. This bird species got much more abundant as we headed further out. Like most birds in general, this species travels long distances, breeding off the coast of Chile before traveling to almost the Arctic afterwards.

Rhinoceros Auklet. Note the horn projecting from the bill that gives this species its name. What a cutie of the North Pacific. 

Albatross soaring in!

Possibly the weirdest fish shape in the universe. Also one of the cutest. Meet the ocean sunfish, the heaviest bony fish and one of the few that are planktonic for their whole lives, being quite awful swimmers. To fuel their lazy lifestyles, they kind of just lazily float around in the current much further below the surface and wait for jellyfish to lazily float by. They then lazily slurp up their lazy prey. But it's cold down there and the time comes where they lazily swim up to the surface and lazily lie there, soaking up the sun and lazily hoping for gulls to come and eat their parasites. What a life.

An occasional snack of the sunfish, the by-the-wind sailor, or its even more fun scientific name, Velella velella. This year there have been many more than normal and supposedly beaches are being filled with washed up dead individuals which are irritating to some people. 

    A short while later, one of the trip leaders pointed out a member of my favorite group of seabirds: an ashy storm-petrel! The little bird was barely seen as it fluttered across our fields of view perhaps a hundred feet away. For those who don't realize the badassery of storm-petrels, they are small seabirds who spend their lives far away from land, braving the roughest of weather and only returning to a few god-forsaken islands for breeding before heading back out into the water. Wow. 

And here is a terrible picture that destroyed my whole point of how epic these birds are. Here one second, too far away and hidden by waves in ten more.

    We then stopped our boat for chumming. Lots of birds came to say the least.

Unsurprisingly, the black-footed albatrosses too, are long distance travelers. Most of the world's population breeds in Hawaii and adults regularly commute to the rich coast of California to find food, particularly squid. These are the most common of the 3 albatross species of the Northern Hemisphere  found off California. Neither the uncommon Laysan nor the rarer short-tailed were seen today unfortunately. 

My best shot of the day by far. If only the head focused a bit more. I'm not complaining though.

I really liked this picture as it showed how choppy the water was. Pretty gnarly ocean.

Fighting o'er the chum

Just a few of the albatrosses seen. At one point there were over 20 around the boat.

Fog? No, salt. This is why one must bring a cloth for their camera lenses on pelagic trips. Wiping every 5 minutes worked well but occasionally more frequent scrubs were needed as larger waves were encountered.

Another life bird - a juvenile parasitic jaeger. Not a parasite like a tapeworm but a kleptoparasite like your friend who always mooches off of you and demands that you bring more food (totally not directed at a particular person from my physics group last year cough cough). These aerial masters are experts of harassing other seabirds to regurgitate their food. This guy chased a Western gull for a bit but it was too fast and I didn't get any pictures. On the way down from the Arctic tundra breeding grounds to the winter vacation in tropical seas.

Another pretty seabird but which one? The definitive highlight of the trip: a HAWAIIAN PETREL, seen as we started to head back. A mega-rarity, ABA code 5, all that good stuff. Once lumped with the Galapagos petrel as the dark-rumped petrel, this squid-loving species has around 20 records from the Pacific coast. Just a few days earlier, there was another mega-rarity bird offshore near here, the Salvin's albatross. That individual was the first California record and it surely wandered far from its normal home in the Southern Ocean. Sort of like that 1967 onshore record of a really wandering wandering albatross in Sonoma County. Birds be cray.

Turning away and never to be seen for the rest of the trip.

Northern fulmar, yet another life bird. This species is found in the North Atlantic and Pacific, with the Pacific race breeding near Alaska and Siberia. Their young are excellent thrower uppers, vomiting stomach acid and fish oil at nest intruders to dissolve the waterproof wax on their feathers, possibly leading to drowning later.

The bird comes in 2 styles, with dark and light morphs. This was a dark morph but a few light morphs were also seen. The light morphs look quite similar to gulls but this species is in fact a shearwater relative (as can be seen with the tube on top of the bill).

  

Another lifer and one of my beloved stormies, a black storm-petrel! An important field mark of this species apart from the all-black coloration is the length of the wings. They look almost nighthawky.

Another life bird - the Scripps's murrelet! It breeds off the coast of southern California and Baja, along with the Craveri's, another life bird which I also saw today but did not get pictures apart from black dots. This adorable little alcid species was recently created as a result of splitting the Xantus's. 

The second to last life bird of the day - Sabine's gull. This beautiful gull species breeds on the Arctic tundra and overwinters in rich southern oceans such as areas of upwelling around western South America and South Africa.

Somewhat better pics of the pink-footed shearwater.

Taking off to continue its ocean wandering.

    I was then really tired and went into the cabin. The person who gave me the seasick pills, Jose, joined me a few minutes later and we had an interesting conversation. He was just a year older than me and has had quite the summer before college. Apparently he just hiked the John Muir Trail and hitchhiked his way to Half Moon Bay. Like me, he was really burnt out and it was both entertaining and kind of scary to watch him eat over 5 packets of sugar from the coffee table. We then took brief naps and woke up as the boat was nearing the pier. The captain spotted a couple of marbled murrelets, which were a great bird to end the day with. 

Not the greatest picture ever.

Right now, the murrelets are still in drab breeding plumage which is used to blend in with their vegetated nest surroundings. Unlike most seabirds, these alcids nest in tall trees of old growth coastal forests from California to Alaska. Because of their cryptic breeding habits, they were the last seabirds to have their nesting areas discovered and are the most susceptible to logging. 

    In total, I got 15 life birds, my first ABA code 5, and a really great experience. Unfortunately, I could have gotten 17 with the Pacific loon mentioned earlier and the 2 black-vented shearwaters that appeared while I was trying hard to stay standing in the bathroom but I'm not complaining.

    Again, I would like to thank Shearwater Journeys for this awesome birding trip and Jose for having interesting conversations with me and giving me the seasick pills. And of course I would like to thank my parents for finally letting go of the million ways they thought I could die on the trip, driving me to Pillar Point, and paying for the trip. I hope to go on another pelagic trip in the near future. For far superior pictures and many very interesting reads about ocean weather systems, seabirds, and other marine life, please click the link to Debi's blog below. Until next time, enjoy life and love nature!

http://shearwaterjourneys.blogspot.com/2014/08/breaking-news-hawaiian-petrel-on.html