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Posted by Toe on 22:34:27 07/11/10
Paul "Life is Good" Bithorn, Angel & Mariel "I already got that for the Year" Abreu, Brian "did you bring enough water" Rapoza, and Jim "I want a Band-rumped Storm-Petrel" Sigsbee ventured out today with picture-perfect conditions. Unlike the NE 20 kt wind and 6-7 ft seas we endured on the May 22 trip, today we had a NW-N wind at ~8 kts as we headed out. We bypassed Fowey and instead cruised southeast out of Bear Cut to the deep water. We had our first Pelagic bird, a Cory's Shearwater, just past the reef in about 120 ft of water, a precursor of things to come.
After another Cory's, a couple of Audubon's, and a couple of Sooty Terns and one Bridled while running out, we started finding flocks of birds out in 800-1,000 ft of water. We had several flocks with Audobon's Shearwaters, Sooty Terns, some Bridled Terns, a few Brown Booby, and a couple of flocks with good numbers of Cory's Shearwaters. At one point we put out a chum slick after spotting a Wilson's Storm-Petrel and had two of them feeding close to the boat. While looking at the Wilson's feeding in our slick, we noticed several Frigatebirds with smaller birds underneath feeding over a school of fish to our south. We ran in their direction and bout halfway there, a Storm-Petrel came right at the boat. I throttled down and here came a Band-rumped Storm-Petrel that almost ended up in Jim's lap. Life bird for Jim! Sorry you couldn't get better looks. I pulled the camera out but it continued past us and was too far to stern for me to take a shot.
By about 10:30 the winds calmed down to almost nothing, and the birding got slow and the day got hot. We had left the dock at 7:00, and were back at 12:00, but we had a really nice assortment of birds in the short time we were out with some spectacular looks. We also had a really nice assortment of passengers as well! Photos to come.
The days list: (Paul, check my numbers in case I'm off)
Cory's Shearwater (40)
Audubon's Shearwater (40-50)
Brown Booby (10)
Wilson's Storm-Petrel (4)
Band-rumped Storm-Petrel
Magnificent Frigatebird (~10)
Sooty Tern (60)
Bridled Tern (12)
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