I'm going to begin this diary with a major mea culpa. On Sunday morning I'm going to be packing up and then heading back to Tallahassee after living much of the past week on St George Island while we had work done on our house. That means I won't be around for comments until at least noon eastern time and possibly later. I didn't realize this until just recently or I would have asked to switch weeks. So my apologies for being a bad 'host'.
This diary is a followup to Milly Watt's excellent diary on our pelagic trip from Westport Washington in late June. As we shared photos there is going to be some overlap but I'll try and give this diary a different spin. I can't possibly match the quality of her prose (just read her first sentence - it is amazing and so very true) or her photographs but hopefully I can contribute something different. And I'll add a few sea birds from later in my trip as well.
Anyone who's read my diaries and comments may have gathered that I have a great love for water birds in general and ocean birds in particular. Partly this is due to their first sensible habit of flying around and doing interesting stuff out in the open where you can actually see it. But despite, or perhaps because of, my inland upbringing the sea has always had great romance for me and birds that make their living on the ocean have a special place in my heart.
If you think of ocean birds you may think of gulls and terns. Or shorebirds such as sandpipers or petrels. With a few exceptions most of those birds seldom venture more than a mile or two or three from shore. They aren't the goals of birders on a pelagic trip.
The term pelagic refers to the open ocean. A pelagic species is on that is tied to the ocean but not to land (i.e. not the bottom and not the shore). A pelagic trip targets birds that are typically found over the ocean far from land and are usually difficult to impossible to see from land.
The most common pelagic bird on the trip (and probably most pelagic trips) - the sooty shearwater. One of the most abundant sea birds in the world
In the northern Pacific ocean the pelagic birds mostly fall into three taxonomic groups, all of which contain birds that are difficult if not impossible to see in North America without getting on a boat.
A common view of birds from the boat. A sooty shearwater again
1) Laridae (Gulls, terns, and their relatives). Most of these are coastal or even inland birds. However a few spend most of their non-breeding time far at sea (Jaegers and Skuas) or migrate far out to sea (e.g. Arctic Tern). Most of these could be seen from land at some point in North America (South Polar Skua is an exception) but it would often be more expensive and time consuming to find them on their breeding grounds.
2) Alcidae (Auks, Puffins and their relatives). These are strictly marine birds and some species spend much of their foraging time far offshore. Some species (Guillemots and to a lesser extent Murres) can be seen from shore relatively easily but others would be difficult without a trip to a remote breeding colony.
3) Procellariiformes (tubenoses). This is probably the most abundant group of birds on the planet that most people have never seen. Members include albatrosses, shearwaters, and petrels. These are highly marine birds with most species spending virtually all their time off the nest over the open ocean, usually out of sight of land.
The two shearwaters seen on our trip: sooty (all dark) and pink-footed (light underneath). Both are southern hemisphere breeders.
All of the photos from the trip are of this group of birds. The alcids are not cooperative on the open ocean, diving or flying directly away the boat as soon as they spot it. We only saw two pelagic larids, a south polar skua and an arctic tern, neither of which lingered for a photograph.
So why are these birds hanging out so far out to sea? Food. Although the open ocean is not as rich in food as coastal areas there is A LOT of open ocean and areas near the continental shelf and along undersea canyons have upwellings of water that bring nutrients (and the organisms utilizing those nutrients) to the surface.
Northern Fulmar. An arctic (and north temperate) breeding tubenose. These are more common on pelagic trips in the fall when breeding is completed.
Still birds are birds and they have to nest somewhere. Our birds fall into three main categories once again that approximately, but not exactly, line up with our three main taxonomic groups.
1) Arctic breeders. A lot of birds breed in the arctic. Most of the year the arctic is inhospitable and most terrestrial organisms are dormant with a few hardy exceptions. However for a brief 2-3 month window in the summer the arctic has warm temperatures and abundant sunlight. Lots of food for a bird that can get to the arctic, breed, and get the hell out before it gets cold and dark again. Many of the arctic breeders are familiar winter birds elsewhere in North America. But a few migrate and winter far out at sea so the interpid birder who wants to add them to their list needs to either head to the arctic in June or head out to sea at some other time of year.
Leaches Storm Petrel. This was my life bird for the trip. Storm petrels are small tubenoses that fly swallow-like over the ocean. Leaches feed further out in the ocean than the other species, picking tiny food particles off the surface of the water.
2) Inaccessible coastal breeders. Sea birds tend to breed in places that hard to get to. Islands just off the coast are a favorite spot, especially if they have cliffs. Other seabirds nest in forests, often far inland. Seeing them at sea is easier than seeing them on land.
3) Oceanic island breeders. Islands far from continents typically had no predators before Polynesian and European colonization. Birds that nest on these islands often wanter vast distances when they are not nesting.
Several Leaches Storm Petrels. I was astonished at how many of these small birds there were out there 40 miles offshore.
So the birds you see out on the open ocean are a real mix. Cassin's auklets that are nesting only a dozen miles away at some hidden location on the coast. Jaegers and fulmars that are breeding in the arctic. Albatrosses that are breeding on Hawaiian atolls. And shearwaters that breed off the coast of Chile and in New Zealand.
The other storm petrel out there that day was the beautiful Fork-tailed Storm Petrel. Small, erratic in flight, and the same color as the ocean, to say they were a challenge to photograph is an understatement. I'm amazed Milly got this photo.
I enhanced this photo so they would show up. I had seen exactly one of these birds before in my life and now five were in the same frame!
I find this fascinating but I also just love the sense of being mile out in the ocean, on the edge of really different world than most people ever experience. But going on a pelagic trip is definitely no for everyone. Although they are pretty reasonably priced for an all day excursion for a small group they are quite a bit more expensive than driving to your favorite local birding spot and going for a walk. They leave really early in the morning (I'm not entirely sure why - this one left at 530 AM and came back at 330 PM - not sure why it couldn't have started and ended two hours later). And there is the seasickness risk.
The 'big' draw on pelagic trips in the northern Pacific is the opportunity to see the giants of the seabird world: albatrosses. These are black-footed albatrosses, by far the most commonly seen of the three northern species in the eastern Pacific. We had seen one or two here and there throughout the day until we ran into a fishing boat and lured about 50 of them over to us.
So it is always good to be able to see birds on dry land. An unexpected bonus of our trip to the Olympic peninsula, about 5 days later, was a short hike out to the tip of Cape Flattery. The cape is on Makah reservation and is the extreme northwestern point of the state of Washington and thus of the contiguous US (there are actually a couple of islands slightly further west). The tribe has built an excellent trail out to the cape with several look outs to give you excellent views.
I was expecting to see maybe a Murre or something out there if I was lucky. At the very end I walked out and looked down and saw a Tufted Puffin below me. Even though the birds were pretty close we were a couple hundred feet up from sea level so the photos are extreme crops.
For quite some time we watched the puffin dive and surface as well as some pigeon guillemots. I'd only seen guillemots in pairs or single birds before but here there was a loose aggregation of at least a dozen birds.
Distant shot of tufted puffin and two pigeon guillemots. Rhinoceros auklet wasn't quite so cooperative.
Eventually a rhinoceros auklet showed up as well. I also saw some Murres flying in the distance. So I saw four alcids from dry land - as many as I had from the boat and much better views (the land holding still and all that).