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Posted by Toe on 23:05:32 06/13/09
Today I ventured out with Trey, Larry and Phillip Manfredi, Stephen Paez, Alex Harper, and Alex's girlfriend Alicia. The weather forecast from a few days ago looked promising, calling for E-SE winds of 10-15 kts. for Fri and Sat. By last night the forecast had changed to 10, and this morning it was about 5 kts, and a little out of the SW. I was a little concerned, but we headed out anyway.
At Fowey the Brown Booby were there in force. I counted 18, 1 subadult and the rest juvies. From there we headed to deeper water and quickly found out that the birds would not be in close. In addition to the lack of an onshore wind, there was a "bad" water event recently and we had to travel out to 1,000 ft (~12 mi offshore) to find clean, blue water. I later spoke to a charter captain who told me that yesterday they had dirty green water out to 900 ft. Could this be something that originated in the Gulf of Mexico?
Out past 1,000 ft. we found our first birds, with excellent looks at Audubon's Shearwaters and Bridled Terns. We followed a Band-rumped Storm-Petrel that led us to a second Band-bumped, so we set up a chum slick using Larry's secret technique and soon had 2 Band-rumped and then 2 Wilson's Storm-Petrels feeding in the slick. We also had a few flyby Audubon's Shearwaters and a distant Cory's. The Cory's was flying north, while all the Audubon's were heading south. Just one more piece of the mysterious pelagic puzzle. We headed out to almost 20 miles, with most of the birds seen between 17 and 19 miles off. We added one each Wilson's and Band-Rumped Storm-Petrels and a Brown Booby, along with some terns. Around noon we headed back, observing how the dark green water was out to about 600 ft. Normally, the water is a clean, dark blue from about 300-400 ft out. The calm weather did allow for fantastic looks at the birds, and I'm sure both Larry and Trey got great photos. Thanks to all ventured out today. Phillip is quite a trooper.
The list:
Cory's Shearwater
Audubon's Shearwater (16)
Wilson's Storm-Petrel (3)
Band-rumped Storm-Petrel (3)
Brown Booby (19)
Sooty Tern (3)
Bridled Tern (25)
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