Bridled Tern perched on a coconut in the early morning light.
This is is a summary of my bird sightings off the Atlantic coast of Florida three weeks ago today.
I’ve discussed some non-bird aspects of the trip in two Daily Buckets, here and here. Pelagic birding, the seeking out of oceanic birds that are hard if not impossible to see from land, is a relatively new aspect of birding. Although I am not a hard core birder (and this is never more apparent to me than when I am around hard-core birders) I do admit to having a real love of going on these birding boat trips. My love stems back to 1997 when I went on a whale-watching boat tour out of Boston that took us out to the Stellwagen bank. Not only did I see a bunch of whales but also some really cool birds that I had never seen before. And quite a lot of them. It made me realize that all those petrels and shearwaters, several pages of birds in the field guide unseen by me, really did exist and there were, in fact, quite a lot of them.
However, living far from the ocean, my first real pelagic trip wasn’t until some nine years later when I managed to go to Oregon for a conference and, by chance, there was a trip out the weekend before the meeting started. I got twelve life birds that day, the last time I got anything close to that number in North America in one day and something I doubt will ever happen again (for me) on this continent. Also an ocean sunfish.
I’ve been living in Florida for six plus years now, my first ever experience living close to the ocean. Pelagic birding is not a big thing here. The gulf of Mexico is pretty shallow and you need to go a long, long way offshore to get to deeper water and even there the number of pelagic species is pretty low. The Atlantic is better but both the continental shelf edge and the gulf stream are far offshore here. Pelagic trips have to go further out to see many of the birds. Also the density of birds is low relative to cold water areas. I wasn’t aware that there were any regular pelagic tours in Florida until quite recently. The Marine Science Center in Ponce Inlet on Florida’s ‘Space Coast’ runs a small number each year.
So, on September 28, I found myself getting up at 3 AM and arriving at the boat ‘dock’ (actually a parking lot beside a waterside restaurant) for our 4 AM departure. After three hours heading out to sea in the dark the sun came up. This is the third dkos diary featuring this photo but oh well.
Almost immediately there was a silhouette of a bird gliding by and vanishing in the dim air. Followed by a cry of ‘Cory’s Shearwater’. One of my target birds for the trip but not a very good look.
This was the pattern for a lot of the early part of the trip. Birds appeared and then disappeared, allowing brief glances but nothing close or clear. Most of the observations were of ‘tropical terns’ a generic term referring to two very similar species of tern that frequent the offshore waters: sooty tern and bridled tern. Sooty terns are very widespread in the warm oceans of the world. According to Theodore Cross, in his excellent book Waterbirds, the global population may be 80 or 90 million individuals. The differences in appearance between these two species are subtle but their behavior is strikingly different. The sooties are on the wing constantly, apparently seldom, if ever, alighting on the water and remaining in flight for months or years at a time, sleeping on the wing and never landing. The bridled terns, on the other hand, are very fond of perching on small floating objects in the ocean.
So the quality of the pictures I have of the two species are dramatically different. No good Sooty pictures despite the fact they were the most common species seen throughout the day. Both of these were life birds for me.
Bridled Tern
Sooty Tern
Also seen repeatedly on the trip were two species of shearwater, Audubon’s shearwater and Cory’s Shearwater. A third species, Great Shearwater, was seen once. Shearwaters are tubenoses, birds related to albatrosses and petrels. This entire group is composed of oceanic birds that come to land only to nest and are usually only seen far out to see. Shearwaters are like mini-albatrosses – they fly with the same stiff-winged gliding low over the ocean. They are smaller and flap their wings a bit more often. I had seen Great Shearwater before but the other two were new to me. They did land in the water but times that they were close enough for photos were rare.
Audubon’s is a small shearwater with a dark brown back and very white underparts. It looks almost like an alcid when sitting on the water. Cory’s shearwater is a larger bird with less of a crisp distinction between upper and lower plumage. For those of you with west coast experience, pink-footed shearwaters are very similar in general appearance. The Audubon’s shearwater is a very widespread bird with our individuals probably coming from breeding populations on Caribbean islands. Cory’s Shearwater breeds on islands in the eastern Atlantic (e.g. Cape Verde Islands).
Audubon’s Shearwater
Cory’s Shearwater
The image of the Cory's shearwaters below was enhanced so you could see them more clearly - they aren't this bright in reality
Below are Cory's Shearwaters in flight. They have a looser flight than many shearwaters but still much stiffer than a gull (for example).
Far out in the Gulf Stream was another tubenose, and probably the main target of most of the people on the boat: black-capped petrel. This bird is a member of the genus Pterodroma which is one of the most romantic groups of birds in the world. There are many species (maybe thirty) breeding on remote islands scattered throughout the warm seas of the world. Most of them are rare and poorly known. They have a distinctive swooping flight that is very different from the gliding of the shearwaters, instead they fly in great arcs over the water, swooping down and then back up again.
We saw several of the black-capped petrels, the only species of Pterodroma that you can really consistently see off North America (several other species have been seen but in much smaller numbers). Mostly I saw white dots on the horizon, bobbing up and down. I did get one close up view of this bird (which could be mistaken for other Pterodroma species but not for anything else) but it was far too brief for a photo. But definitely a heart stopping moment. In contrast to the immense global population of sooty terns there are probably only a few thousand black-capped petrels in existence and they are definitely endangered due to habitat loss (for breeding) on Hispaniola.
There were a number of other interesting bird sightings: a Magnificent frigate bird and a couple of jaegers, all of which I missed. Red-necked phalaropes perched in the drift lines of Sargassum weed. Several brown boobies which were a North American first for me although I had seen them in Belize. And a host of land birds including several great blue herons, a merlin, and a lot of songbirds, mostly warblers. One common yellowthroat landed on the boat and rested for a while.
I’m going to finish with a comment on the challenges of pelagic birding. My first couple of experiences were in situations where the birds were fairly abundant and even if you didn’t see every individual at least some of them were really close to the boat and afforded good looks. Here that wasn’t always the case as bird density was low most of the day (picked up in the late afternoon when most of the photos were taken). Keeping flying birds in view through binoculars on a boat at sea takes some serious skill and I am still functioning at a fairly low level I am in awe of the experts on the boats for their ability to spot and ID these birds at great distances. I generally didn’t even bother trying to look at the warblers, for example, as they just seemed like dots.
I’m posting the complete list of what was seen below from the official trip records. The black terns and common terns were seen in the late afternoon when we were just a few miles from shore. Both are common migrants in Florida at this time of year. Below are four common terns in blurry action.
Black-capped Petrel 12
Cory’s Shearwater 105
Great Shearwater 1
Audubon’s Shearwater 11
Magnificent Frigatebird 1
Brown Booby 7
Great Blue Heron 3
Merlin 2
Osprey 1
Red-necked Phalarope 5
Sooty Tern 95
Bridled Tern 23
Black Tern 191
Common Tern 83
Sandwich Tern 6
Jaeger sp. 1
Parasitic Jaeger 2
Barn Swallow 4
Common Yellowthroat 3
American Redstart 60
Northern Parula 2
Magnolia Warbler 10
Black-throated Blue Warbler 2
Cape May Warbler 2
Black-and-white Warbler 4
Warbler sp. 100
Bobolink