Under Clear Skies

Black Oystercatcher – Luke Tiller

This Saturday (Saturday, 16th) I took off from Dana Point on a pelagic that I had organized for Pasadena Audubon Society. We joined the R/V Sea Explorer on a boat used by The Ocean Institute as part of their educational work. There’s a nice video of the boat in action on Youtube (here).

Of course picking up our boat in Orange County meant that we had a little ride before we crossed the Orange Curtain into Los Angeles County waters. That said I think many of our participants were new enough to pelagic birding that we were more focused on seeing birds than worrying about the imaginary lines that divide our county lists.

Even before leaving the harbor we had a couple of nice sightings in the way of some Black Oystercatchers loafing on the jetty. Then with jumbo bags of  popcorn at the ready we were soon chumming our way out to sea, a steady stream of Heermann’s Gulls and Western Gulls following closely behind us.

Pink-footed Shearwater – Luke Tiller

Just off shore we were soon surrounded by our first “pelagic” birds, a nice stream of Black-vented Shearwaters. These birds predominantly nest in Baja California, are generally limited to the coastlines of Mexico and California and tend to like nearshore waters. Among them other shearwaters can be found as well and we soon had a couple of Pink-footed following behind the boat too. Later we added a couple of Sooty Shearwaters for our third shearwater species on the day.

As well as the shearwaters, we were soon picking up our first jaegers of the trip too. Pomarines were probably the most numerous and one very accommodating one decided to follow the boat for a while, allowing people to get good looks at both the structure, flight style and plumage of this rather magnificent avian pirate. We soon added Parasitic Jaeger, though the real highlight was picking up a Long-tailed Jaeger to complete our jaeger sweep. It’s currently peak season for Long-tailed Jaeger migration and though this species is the least commonly found jaeger in Southern California we managed to get two in Los Angeles County.

Pomarine Jaeger – Luke Tiller

There were plenty of other species to look at as we motored along including Elegant, Caspian and Royal Terns. We even had a few non-avian goodies including Mola Mola and flying fish. That was at least until we got to Los Angeles County waters. As we arrived in LA County it’s as if the bird tap was suddenly turned off (or at least to a trickle). Our flock of following gulls disappeared (probably because I took over chumming) and the fishing boats around Catalina seemed not to be drawing much avian attention.

Though sightings slowed considerably, the quality of sightings was good. The next couple of hours included stumbling upon a couple of nice rafts of Common Terns, our only storm-petrel of the day: Black Storm-Petrel, a couple of pretty Sabine’s Gulls and a complete sweep of three jaeger species.

Craveri’s Murrelet – Luke Tiller

Highlight of the whole trip had to be our luck with alcids. Not only did we manage to find a pretty cooperative Cassin’s Auklet, that sat for a while with us, but we also managed to find a pair of much sought after Craveri’s Murrelets.

Craveri’s Murrelet has a relatively small population and is one of those birds that is both difficult to find and tough to see well. Typical views are unidentifiable ones of their rear ends, as they take off from the water in front of your boat and Sibley even illustrates them as such in his guide. Amazingly the two, perhaps overly full, Craveri’s we found decided to sit on the water in front of us for over five minutes, This allowed for amazing looks, photos and even better amazing listens! I think this was the first time most, if not all on the boat, had ever heard the insect like twittering of these amazing little birds (listen here).

Craveri’s Murrelets

We ended our day heading back along the Orange County coastline where we ran into more Black-vented Shearwaters and a sizable pod of Common Dolphin. Judging from all the enthusiastic comments from participants I think we need to get another pelagic on the Pasadena Audubon Society schedule ASAP.

One of the best parts of the day was that everyone managed to see pretty much all of the birds that we found. This was testament to our excellent boat captain and the fantastic leaders on the day: David Bell, Tom Benson, Kimball Garrett, Brittany O’Connor and Justyn Stahl. Thanks to everyone for making it a fun day on the water.