Adventures on the High Seas, Part Deux: The Slow Boat to Petrelsville

No other type of birding gets my heart beating like ocean boat trips. And, this isn’t the type of beating like, “I’m in love!” or “My team won the Super Bowl”. Rather, more like “I think I’m having a reaction to this seasickness medicine”. And yet, in the pursuit of Big Year Greatness, we continue subjecting ourselves to this.

So, Sunday morning, we ended up at the dock at Point Loma in San Diego at 5:30AM, watching a curious mix of people milling about while they prepared for their sailings: weathered old salts in rubber galoshes, bros with flip-flops and fishing poles, and an odd assortment of characters wearing hiking boots and khaki-colored North Face pants. We instantly knew which group was ours.

Our boat, a large, gleaming white fishing craft appropriately named, “Grande”, departed on time and chugged through the glassy San Diego Bay, past obvious reminders of the military presence. The juxtaposition of a submarine coming in to dock, with the lines of white headstones from Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on the hill above, was a poignant moment:

You can barely see the headstones along the top. If only I had realized this at the time, I could have had a really nice shot... But you get the idea.

Cruising through the harbor was a slow process, but, we thought, maybe we are just in a "No Wake” zone? When our pace didn’t pick up upon reaching open waters, we knew we were in for a long day. That did mean less bouncing, which was nice, and more time to see birds as traveled, so...silver linings and all that.

Unfortunately, birding across the day was somewhat slow compared to what the guides expected. They suspected a primary reason for this was the unusually warm ocean temperature. Water temperatures ranged from 72F-77F throughout the 90-mile trip, which is about 5-7F warmer than usual. Since heat rises, warm water doesn't circulate downward as much, which means it tends to lack nutrients. No nutrients means no plankton, which means no animals that eat plankton, which means no animals that eat animals that eat plankton, etc.

The highlight of the day was a group of Least and Black Storm-Petrels that we located about 45 miles north of San Diego. Now, we had seen just a handful of these birds for the entire 7-8 hour trip at that point, when one of the guides said, "I think I see a raft of them in the distance!" The boat changed direction to head that way, and upon approaching the area, we saw several huge clusters like this:

Getting closer, the thick groupings of birds looked like this:

I believe they estimated the total number of birds at around 2500-3000 individuals, although counting was nearly impossible.

We could get fairly close to one group, and I got this picture:

Which I think has a couple nice comparisons of different birds. On the left side of the photo, I believe there is a Black Storm-Petrel next to an Ashy Storm-Petrel in the same wing position (the Ashy being the bird on the right with a lighter gray wing):

And on the right side of that picture, a nice comparison of a Least Storm-Petrel and a Black, with the Least being the tiny bird at the bottom-left, and the Black being the bird right behind her:

Least Storm-Petrels are about the size of a sparrow, so it's amazing that we found any of them in the open ocean!

So, two more birds added to our year total, which is SLOWLY inching its way up.

Next stop this weekend: Montana! Because, Gray Partridge!

Adios, y a ser un buen huevo!
Me