Capt Aaron and crew came upon a fantastic whalewatching experience while on our annual 5-day Labor Day Pelagic Birding Tour (September 5-9, 2016). There was a group of 40-60 whales–blue, fin, and humpback whales–in the same area feeding on krill and squid. This video was taken while some of the whales came very close to the boat. Enjoy!
Dave Pereksta’s photo of the murrelet from a previous trip.
Hello birders: We had a great day on the calm Pacific Ocean today! We started the day off by checking out lots of shearwaters and storm petrels in our slick. The highlight this morning was an epic look at a Guadalupe murrelet. Shortly after we had a Red-billed tropicbird circle the boat for around 15 minutes while we had a brown booby fly by as well.
The afternoon’s sightings consisted of fin whales, blue whales and some more common dolphin. Even a loggerhead turtle graced us for awhile. We saw a few Craveri’s murrelets, and the last pair we saw let us get close for us all to enjoy. We’re going to bird for a couple hours before calling a great trip!
Capt Aaron and the Searcher crew
Many thanks to Tom Blackman for the brown booby photo use!
Hello birders: We had some strange weather this morning with patchy fog and even mist. The birding has been on the slow side so far, but the ones we have seen are lifers for many. One was a Wilson storm petrel and for others, it was the Bullers shearwater. We found several more blue whales and a couple fin whales in the area again today. We’re hoping for good birding this afternoon.
Capt Aaron and the Searcher crew
The afternoon’s report included a tropicbird (photo from a previous trip) and Townsend’s storm petrels!
Hello! We’re enjoying this nice weather by the Channel Islands. We started east of Santa Cruz Island and followed the shelf edge. We had really good looks at long-tailed and pomarine jaegers, lots of common dolphin and a small group of bottlenose dolphin. There are also large numbers of red-necked phalaropes and black-vented shearwaters in this area.
Black-vented shearwater, thanks to Tom Blackman
We are going up by San Miguel Island this afternoon, hoping to see some more wildlife.
Capt Aaron and Team Searcher
Blue whale fluking
Surfacing blue whale and open blowhole
p.s. Capt Aaron called the office shortly after sending this report. He was in an area of more than a dozen blue whales and they were lunge feeding all around the boat! Needless to say, he was pretty excited and wanted us to add it to the mid-day report! Many thanks to Rob Nawojchik for the use of these blue whale photos!
It appears that the crew and leaders are too busy to send an official report!
Stand-outs from yesterday afternoon: black-footed albatross, least and black storm petrels, Craveri’s murrelets. This morning brought pomarine and long-tailed jaegers, skua, giant mola, bottlenose and common dolphin. Beautiful weather! We are standing by for a mid-day report and photo…unless they remain too busy! (Attached is a Black-footed albatross taken by Tom Blackman.)
Our annual 5-day birding adventure through the southern-most ABA waters and through the Channel Islands departed today with 25 birders and 4 leaders.
Birders from across the US joined the tour, and Andrea and Neil came from Canada.
Leader Dave P reported for duty, loaded for birds!
Orientation before setting sail.
Wishing them fantastic sightings of pelagic birds and marine mammals!
