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Posted by Toe on 22:17:23 04/27/07
After days of steady east winds negatively impacting our migrating songbirds, Trey and I decided to venture offshore to see if we could make these winds work to our favor with some pelagics. We started off early and quickly had two 2nd year Northern Gannets right off the Key Biscayne lighthouse.(see Trey's photos, opinions please) Surprisingly, these would be the only two gannets for the morning. Initially, we saw only cormorants and Royal Terns at Fowey Rocks lighthouse out on the reef, but soon encountered a juvenile Brown Booby. We later relocated this bird perched on the lighthouse and Trey got some nice shots. This one was pretty exciting at first, since at distance the feet looked pink (!!) Still, if anyone thinks it's not a Brown Booby when Trey posts, please let us know!
Just past the reef, we started getting into shearwaters. One Audobon's, then two more, then 1/2 dozen more, then... To make it short, I lost count at 40, and this happened in about 15 minutes. We were happy with so many shearwaters, but wanted more variety so we headed deeper. There were scattered Terns around, and we got two Sooty Terns right off the bat, and then it was all Bridled. In about 1,200 feet of water we had two Red-necked Phalaropes fly past the boat doing mach 2. We tried to chase them down to get a photo, but the best we could manage was to have them slowly leave us behind. Doesn't matter how much to rev-up your boat, they can still out-run you. Surprisingly absent were the storm petrels, but the variety should improve as summer approaches. We saw no migrating warblers either, btw.
Morning's list:
Northern Gannet (2, subadult)
Brown Booby (1 imm, another probable)
Red-necked Phalarope (2)
Audubon's Shearwater (60+)
Bridled Tern (55)
Sooty Tern (2)
Frigatebirds
Royal and Least Terns
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