Captain's Blog

Hello all,

We started our day at Santa Barbara Island where a brown booby colony has established. Recently a blue footed booby has joined the colony, so this is the first time that we have seen a blue-footed booby on our Southern California pelagic tours, which is significant. There is speculation that there might be breeding between the brown and blue-footed boobies.

After spending time viewing the boobies, we headed west towards a temperature change with hopes of some bird life there. There were shearwaters, storm petrels, jaegers ,terns and an occasional murrelet. We also found common dolphins, a few bottlenose dolphins, and a single humpback whale.
We are headed to San Miguel Island to spend the night and then head out into deep water tomorrow.

Captain Art and Team Searcher

Hello all,

We departed on our annual pelagic birding trip today. We are headed west for the afternoon.

We saw loads of black-vented shearwaters on the 9-mile bank. And we went through an area of black storm petrels with an occasional least storm petrel. We also listed pomarine jaegers, Sabine’s gulls, and masked and brown boobies.

We are continuing west tonight and starting at Santa Barbara island hoping for a look at the brown booby colony.

Enjoying great weather!
Captain Art and Team Searcher

We are always grateful for Tom Blackman’s photos in our birding blog posts, including this one!