Your intrepid mariners have returned from a voyage to the edge of the Earth, and--spoiler alert--we did not fall off! Really, we actually traveled to the edge: we sailed out of Half Moon Bay, CA, to the Continental Shelf, which is about as edge-like as you're going to get, and then back again.
Unlike the February trip, where we were fog-blind much of the day, this trip was fairly clear. But similar to that trip, the swells were fairly strong at times (to my land-lubber eyes anyway), and so about a half-dozen of our fellow sailors offered their breakfast to the sea in what I can only assume was an effort to attract fish and birds. Seriously, people! Seasickness medicine costs less than $5, and it works! Take it!!!
That said, the stream of chum did make me wonder: why is it that Birders persist in doing something that makes people puke? If somebody next to me in a restaurant ate the soup and then immediately started projectile vomiting, I would definitely not order the soup! Yet, in a few weeks, we'll be on yet another boat, so therein lies the clinical insanity of this activity.
But enough talk about bodily fluids.
The birds and sea life were amazing. We added five new Life Birds plus one familiar bird that we hadn't seen on the year, which was our biggest day in quite some time.
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| Baby Common Murre (left) with Daddy. In Common Murres, the female is responsible for laying, hatching, and caring for the chick until they're ready to swim. Then, the male takes over as sole guardian until Junior matures, while Mom recuperates back at the nest and then presumably flies to Cabo for spa treatments and margaritas. Because, dammit, she deserves it. But seriously, our local Murres nest in the Farallon Islands, more than 30 miles away from where we saw them. So, this little guy, in his first outing, has swam at least that far! Tell your kids that when they bitch about having to take out the garbage. |
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| Ocean Sunfish, which is not a bird. They like to bask near the surface, where gulls pick parasites off them. Eww! This fellow was fairly good sized, and apparently big ones can be nearly 2000 lbs! |
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| Black-footed Albatross! Their wingspan can be as large as 7 feet! Almost all of them nest in the Hawaiian Islands, so there's a good chance this guy flew well over 2,000 miles, just to greet us on our boat. Said an excited young woman from Michigan, taking a break from her summer job in Yosemite to take this trip, "I never thought I'd ever see an albatross!" I hear ya, sister. |
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| So albatross can walk on water. Big deal. But if he can turn that water into wine, then... well, that would fundamentally challenge some assumptions. |
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| And herein lies one of the many challenges with birding on the ocean. Not only are you moving, and the bird moving in a different direction, but the ocean isn't flat! |
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| Leatherback Sea Turtle!!! The Pacific subpopulation likely numbers only a few thousand individuals, so seeing one is a rare experience. They nest from Indonesia to the Solomon Islands, so this fella may have swam over 7,000 miles! When asked why, the turtle blinked several times, and a small tear may have run from his left eye. |
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| Laysan Albatross!! A Double-Albatross Day! These guys also breed mostly in the Hawaiian Islands, and so also traveled thousands of miles. I'm beginning to feel like I should go jog around the block or something. |
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| She flew right by the boat, and I managed to capture this image. You can't tell from this angle, but the wings are nearly 7 feet wide! |
One final tip, aside from the seasickness warning: if you ever decide to go on one of these trips, get a good night's sleep the evening before your trip, or you might fall asleep standing up! Like I did! Again! While leaning against the railing, again! What is wrong with me???
Next up, we're doing our first first chase in some time! We're leaving Wednesday night for a 48 hour trip to Texas in search of a very rare visitor to North America, a Collared Plover that has been reported in South Texas for the past week! Cross your fingers that she stays there for a few more days!
By the way, how do you say, "Plover"? Does it rhyme with "over"? "lover"? "mover"? Discuss!
Sweltering in me timbers, because it's 94F outside,
Me
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