Marty & I were awake at 5 a.m. on this Friday morning, with the
Chuck-Will’s-Widows calling outside our window.
We roused and I cooked scrambled cheese eggs and toast for breakfast,
and we packed to go our separate ways.
Marty and Ellen were going to a cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains, and I
am driving 5½ hours east to the Outer Banks.
I pretty much drove straight through, taking a room at the Breakwater
Inn in Hatteras. I enjoyed a beer at the Wreck and waited for the Stormy Petrel II to arrive, watching the kids at the
dock filleting “dolphin” and blackfin tuna.
There was a boatload of Faux News listeners raising hell on the dock.
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| Making America Groan Again . . . loud music and loud obscenities |
The folks on the Pelagic trip had a really slow day of
birding, and had suffered a downpour of rain today, but they noted the light
wind was out of the southwest, which isn’t all that conducive to finding Gulf
Stream birds. I ate supper at the Breakwater Inn’s restaurant, and went
to bed early.
The alarm went off at 4:00 a.m., where it was 73º and
mostly cloudy with a slight northeast breeze.
I was down at the marina and on board the Stormy Petrel II at 5
a.m.
Seabirding is run by Brian Patteson
and is the venue for pelagic seabird trips out to the Gulf Stream in the
Mid-Atlantic. When the birders arrived,
Skipper Brian gave the safety and birding briefing, and introduced us to the
spotters for the trip today’s Kate Sutherland,
Phil Rusch
and Michael Sandoz.
We left the dock around 5:30 and enjoyed the sun rise.
As we crossed the bar and into a fairly calm sea, the
participants gathered at the bow, at the stern, and on the flying bridge to
scan the waters for seabirds.
We were accompanied by Common Terns,
and before too long,
we began seeing shearwaters. I’d seen
Great Shearwaters and Cory’s Shearwaters from a fishing boat off Moorhead City
25 years ago, but it’d been a while. So,
my rusty identification skills were subjected to a steep learning curve.
The Great Shearwaters have a dark ‘cap’ as well as a dark
bill, and sport a “U”-shaped white band above their tail,
Whereas the Cory’s Shearwaters are pretty much brown
above, and have a yellowish bill.
Since I was last on this Ocean, people have been paying
attention to the two separate populations of Cory’s . . . the group that breeds
on the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores is the more common out here, and
comprise the ‘borealis’ group of the two.
These birds have an extensive dark tip to the wing with little or no
white on primaries 6-9, and none on p10.
The Scopoli’s group which breeds in the Mediterranean,
however, shows distinct and long white tongues/inner webs on the primaries,
including p10, eventually leading into dark wingtips and giving the impression
of a much whiter underwing.
Whether these two groups are subspecies or species
depends on which taxonomists you put your trust in, but the American Birding Association (and eBird) follows the lead of the American Ornithological Society
in considering them as two distinct populations of the same species. Perhaps one day, the AOS will “split” them
and we will gain an “armchair” Life Bird species.
Not long into the trip, we began seeing good numbers of
Audubon’s Shearwater, which was a new species for me, and was my ABA Life Bird
No. 612.
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| They look and fly somewhat like the Black-vented Shearwater off the California coast |
Before long, we got out into the Gulf Stream, where
drifts of the Sargassum, a brown algae, provide shelter and feed for a breadth of fish,
arthropods, mollusks and other creatures.
Some of the folks on shore consider this algae a nuisance when it washes
up on “their” beach, but it is the foundation of the ecosystem out in the warm
waters of the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf Stream.
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| There are over 300 species of Sargassum . . . |
The Stormy Petrel II drags a chum cage at the stern, where a frozen block of fish parts melts as we go, and the scent attracts the interest of the "tube-noses" (petrels and shearwaters), which have a highly-developed sense of smell.
The Gulf Stream specialties began to make their appearance. The Black-capped Petrel (Lifer No. 613) and
the Band-rumped Storm Petrel (Lifer No. 614) were new species for me, and I
enjoyed getting to know these tube-noses, which are not found off the Pacific
Northwest coast.
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| Black-capped Petrel has the black cap (uh-huh...) and white at the nape of the neck |
The Wilson’s Storm-petrels are common out here, with
their short tails and long legs. The
name “Petrel” is said to have been so-called from its way of flying with its
feet just skimming the surface of the water, recalling Saint Peter's walk on the
sea of Galilee (Matthew xiv.28-29).
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| Walking on the water |
The Band-rumped Storm Petrel reminds me of the Leach’s
Storm-Petrel that we see regularly off Westport, Washington, but flies
differently; more directly than the bat-like flapping I associate with Leach’s.
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| Band-rumped Storm-Petrels are larger & have shorter legs than the Wilson's |
We did have a Leach’s fly past, which proved to be Life
Bird No. 700 for one of the birders (sorry; I’ve misplaced your name . . . if
you read this, let me know and I’ll give you full recognition!).
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| Life Bird No. 700 - he is a happy birder! |
A Sooty Tern flew over, which was a new species for
several of the birders.
Then, a Fea’s Petrel came by and circled the boat and
chum slick for quite a while. This was
Lifer No. 615 for me.
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| Fea's Petrel has no white at its nape |
As we were taking in the Fea’s, we were ‘photo-bombed’ by
a Masked Booby, which was pretty
unexpected. These Boobies nest in more
tropical climes, and I’d only seen them before on a trip to the Dry Tortugas.
Finally, it was time to return to port, and although we
kept a ‘weather eye’ out for the birds, pretty much saw more of the same on the
return trip.
The folks who’d been out yesterday said that they had a
much better trip today, so my taking only one day on the Atlantic was a crap
shoot that came out in my favor. That
said, the ocean changes every day, and you can’t count on the birds being
there, or the ‘target’ species’ being in the same place.
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| Audubon's Shearwater |
I guess I just need to be spending more time on the water! Brian docked and we thanked him for a great day on the Ocean. I returned to the motel and ate supper again at the Breakwater,
and turned in early after a fantastic day in the Gulf Stream.
Hatteras Pelagic eBird Checklist is Here
