Pelagic Birding Tour Trip Report June 2-6, 2008

DATE: June 2-6, 2008

TRIP: Offshore Birding Trip

Report

The squawking of Red-crowned Parrots greeted 27 birders as we boarded the live-aboard vessel Searcher at Point Loma’s Fisherman’s Landing on Monday morning, June 2, 2008 and prepared for our 5-day adventure on the high seas. Upon sailing we immediately headed for the Nine-mile Bank and within an hour were enjoying storm-petrels, alcids, shearwaters and Northern Fulmar.

Monday’s highlights included 33 Black-storm Petrels, 525 Sooties, 7 Northern Fulmar, 2 SOUTH POLAR SKUA, 18 Xantus’s Murrelets, Sabine’s Gull and 30 Risso’s Dolphin. At dinner in Searcher’s comfortable salon that evening, some participants already had eight lifers!

Tuesday morning we awoke at the Channel Islands, just south of Santa Barbara at Anacapa Island where we enjoyed close-ups of Pigeon Guillemots, Black Oystercatchers, Surf Scoters, Common Murre, Xantus’s Murrelets and hundreds of shearwaters, causing leader Jon Feenstra to exclaim, “This place is rich in birdly goodness!”

The seas were too high and the winds too windy to sail west to the San Juan Seamount, so at our morning leaders meeting we agreed with Captain Art to sail south with the seas and spend Tuesday night in the lee of San Nicholas Island.

Dave Pereksta proved clairvoyant as he prophesied what was in store for Tuesday by pronouncing: “Where there are birds, there are possibly other birds.” Sure enough, the day’s totals included 3 BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS, more than 1500 shearwaters, including a FLESH-FOOTED and 350 Pink-footeds plus 4 SOUTH POLAR SKUA, with 3 of them lined up on the water all at once, an exceptional sighting of this rare-in-spring and normally solitary species.

We breakfasted Wednesday morning in the lee of San Nick Island before heading out for deeper water to find extraordinarily high winds (35 – 50 mph) and 6-8 foot seas, highly unusual for June in the SoCal bight. Not able to reach our intended destination of the continental shelf edge, we continued south towards San Clemente Island. Despite big seas, we racked up sightings of Black, Ashy and Leach’s Storm-petrels, a LAYSAN’S ALBATROSS, an ARCTIC TERN and 5 more SKUA. We enjoyed another delicious Searcher dinner in the shelter of San Clemente’s Pyramid Cove.

Searcher departed the shelter of San Clemente at 1:00 a.m. Thursday and throughout the day we headed southwest to reach the southernmost portion of ABA waters. For the third day in a row, the weather gods served us high winds at a time of year when seas are typically benign. We weren’t about to let the weather get the best of us and found 7 more BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSSES, 2 more LAYSAN’S and more than 100 Leach’s Storm-petrels.

After 3 days of big seas, we awoke at the Nine Mile Bank Friday morning at 5 a.m. in flat calm glassy water and enjoyed close-ups of Xantus’s Murrelets and Cassin’s Auklets during breakfast. While the weather never allowed us to reach the “rarity zone” at the edge of the Continental Shelf, the June Searcher trip proved and exciting adventure for all aboard. A big thank you to Todd Easterlea, Jon Feenstra and Big Dave Pereksta for getting us on birds in big seas and a special thank you to Tanner Easterlea, Dave Povey and Wes Fritz for the great chumming that brought in all those tubenoses. Communication + Teamwork + Camaraderie equals FUN!!