Skip to main content

Pelagic Persistence Pays Off

 

Don’t worry, the corny alliteration in the title of this blog piece does not mean that I am now considering myself to be a purveyor of serious literature! The last day of October saw me on the final pelagic of the season. This was a rescheduled trip from the one that was cancelled on October 11. The weather was reasonably windless and we initially headed out south southeast from Ventura towards the Hueneme Canyon and then on to the east end of Anacapa Island. This was not too exciting, other than an offshore Northern Harrier, and a check of the Cocos Boobies roosting on Anacapa failed to produce any of their rarer cousins. We went through the Anacapa Passage before turning west along the north side of the Santa Cruz Basin towards the Santa Cruz Channel that separates Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands.

 The lack of birds that has characterized recent offshore trips was fully in evidence on this one and we had to hope that it would be a case of quality over quantity. The initial excitement came from a rare mammal – this time in the form of a Guadalupe Fur Seal. Not as exciting as the Sperm Whale on the previous trip, but an animal I have seen just a couple of times previously.

Cassin's Auklet

In the area immediately south of the Santa Cruz Passage, we finally began to run into better numbers of birds. These were predominantly Cassin’s Auklets, Black-vented Shearwaters, (Northern) Fulmars and Red Phalaropes, all feeding along a “current break”. Given the lack of birds elsewhere, we ended up spending almost two hours crisscrossing this area. We eventually had stellar “best-ever” views of a Cassin’s Auklet. Although quite common, this species is often hard to closely approach. They typically fly off qwll before the boat gets close. Fortunately, a few individuals guzzle so much krill that they become too heavy to take off. However, these birds usually constantly dive, making the good views rather brief. This particular individual refrained from diving so we were able to get exceptionally close, prolonged views.

Guadalupe Murrelet

Eventually, a shout came up from the front of the boat about a ‘black-and-white’ murrelet, which was quickly determined to be a Guadalupe. This is by far the hardest to see of the three closely related southern murrelet species. In fact, I had not seen one for about 30 years and it was, of course, a county bird. While I was able to get ‘tickable’ views, the white in front of the eye was only occasionally visible due to the distance and the fact the bird was often facing away. After the bird flushed twice and few a couple of hundred yards, Captain Joel came up with a masterful approach where he allowed us to drift towards the bird from an angle that did not allow it to take off downwind. We finally got close and had really excellent views. Although this was a species I felt I would eventually see, it has almost never been seen on the run down to the Santa Barbara Island booby colony and many of the trips that go out further west to where the murrelet is more frequently seen are too rough for me.

Eventually we began to work our way south down the west edge of the basin, deciding to make a run to the “311” bank, an area of upwelling that often has birds over it. We didn’t quite have time to make it all the to the bank but were rewarded with fantastic looks at two adult Nazca Boobies sitting on a weather buoy. The orange-pink tone to the bill was unambiguous and there was no need to go back-and-forth between Masked and Nazca depending on lighting angles and so on.

Nazca  Boobies

We headed back north, finding a lone Common Tern, and this time went right through the passage between Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz but few birds were feeding there, with the best a lingering Pigeon Guillemot. Heading east through the channel, we were just a few miles off the Ventura coastline when a Red-billed Tropicbird was called out. By the time I got on to the bird, it was already high up in the sky, but I was able to see enough of the wing pattern to eliminate the other two tropicbird species, not that either would be remotely likely.

We certainly ended up with some good quality, which more that compensated for the overall low numbers of birds. Thanks to Peter Schneekloth for providing the photos in this post.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Belated Alaska: Nome Interlude

I am finally catching up with the last couple of posts from our amazing Alaska trip back in June. This first one covers one of our 'schedule padding' days between Gambell and Anchorage. After returning from Gambell, we had an evening and most of the next day to bird before catching a late flight to Anchorage. The evening session was a dud and the next day we decided to head up the Kougarok to find a Wandering Tattler in some breeding habitat as well as check out Salmon Lake again. The tattler search proved futile and activities devolved largely into photographing some common species we had yet to see very well. Golden-crowned Sparrow The first of these were American Tree Sparrow and Golden-crowned Sparrow. We also had very nice looks at singing Arctic Warblers, which were abundant in the roadside willows. Arctic Warbler Ruddy Turnstone We then checked out a different part of Salmon Lake for ducks and other waterbirds. A flock of Common Goldeneye was our first of the trip and th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Belated Alaska: Interior Alaska and Kenai Fjords

  After returning to Anchorage from Utqiagvik, we embarked on the final leg of our Alaska birding trip. This started with visiting the interior around the eastern end of the Denali Highway, traveling via the Glenn Highway. Following that, we would head back south via Anchorage to Seward, where we were taking a cruise out into the Kenai Fjords. After a night in Anchorage, we headed out early on the Glenn Highway. The key target for the interior part of the trip was Hawk Owl. Once we reached the spruce forest areas, we did most of driving at 45 miles an hour or so to allow easier scanning of the roadside treetops for the owl. We also looked for side roads that allowed good views of spruce forest to check along these as well. Short-eared Owl The first side road we tried was near the Eureka Roadhouse. The small lakes and marshes here held a decent variety of wildfowl, including Trumpeter Swan and Barrow’s Goldeneye. Noisy Lesser Yellowlegs teed up for photo opportunities on the top o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Vagrants from All Points of the Compass

  My discovery of the Philadelphia Vireo seemed to mark the tail end of a good pulse of eastern vagrants through the county, although most of these were frequent ones like Tennessee or Blackpoll Warblers. Other than enjoying the continuing flow of Cassin’s Finches, Clark Nutcrackers and Pinyon Jays from the montane bird invasion, the next few days brought little of interest, although I did twitch a Chestnut-sided Warbler – an annual vagrant to the county - at the Hollister Tech Park on Sep 27. Things started to look up that evening when a return check of the Tech Park turned up a nice male American Redstart – most birds we see are in female or immature plumage. As a change from vagrants from the east, the next morning Sophie Cameron and I found our first Tropical Kingbird of the fall during a survey at Laguna Blanca. This Mexican species is a frequent vagrant during the fall as birds reverse migrate north up the Pacific Coast and typically several birds spend the winter. Noting...
Post a Comment
Read more