Captain's Blog

Hello birders,

We’ve had another busy morning with the highlight being a Cook’s petrel and red-billed tropicbird!

Cook’s petrel from previous trip @McGrath

There are also black-footed albatross, loads of shearwaters, Arctic terns and Townsend’s storm petrel too. Here’s a Guadalupe fur seal off the bow.

More later,

Capt Art and Team Searcher

(murrelet photo courtesy of Todd McGrath)

Hello birders,

Black-footed albatross soars past the boat.

We’ve enjoyed a very busy morning with loads of birds: black-footed albatross, Buller’s shearwater, Guadalupe murrelet, long-tailed and pomarine jeager, leach’s storm petrel, and arctic terns! In addition er had  good looks at fin whales, a distant look at a blue whale fluking, and plenty of common dolphin. Guadalupe fur seals also!

Capt Art and Team Searcher

 

 

Afternoon report:

Hello birders,

Buller’s shearwaters

A productive day today! The seas were incredible today with very little wind and sea. Starting from daylight there was a constant chatter on the leaders’ radios with sightings of birds and marine mammals. Black footed albatross, pink footed, sooty and loads of Bullers shearwaters! Jaegers, terns, leech’s storm petrels, red phalropes, fin whales, blue whales and Baird’s beaked whales and several groups of short-beaked common dolphin. We also had a brief sighting of a red-billed tropicbird late in the day. We had as many as 9 black footed albatross behind the boat at one time. The chum worked well. We are looking closer to home tomorrow starting 120 miles west of San Diego.

Capt Art and Team Searcher

(Dolphin photo courtesy of Chris Earley)

Hello birders,

We had a productive afternoon with plenty of pink-footed shearwaters, and a new shearwater: Buller’s. We sighted multiple birds. We also enjoyed more common dolphin with shearwaters associated with them.

The finale was a large area of jumping, large bluefin tuna with lots of shearwaters and a masked booby that came by the boat so everyone could see it! It was an impressive show of birds and tuna. We added a few northern fulmars to the list and a single distant black-footed albatross.
We are headed to San Miguel island for the night.

Capt Art and Team Searcher

Hello birders:

(brown booby photo courtesy of Tom Blackman.)

We started our day at Santa Barbara Island observing a colony of brown boobies that have made the island their home and are nesting here. There was one Nazca booby there as well. We were able to get the boat in close to the island safely to get a great look at the birds on the rock.

We have travelled west most of the morning and crossed into the Santa Cruz basin and into deeper water. So far we have seen shearwaters, storm petrels, boobies, terns and jaegers. We’ve encountered 3 different groups of short-beaked common dolphins with boobies and shearwaters associated with them. We are headed northwest now in shallower water towards the Channel Islands.

(pink-footed shearwater and Risso’s dolphins photos courtesy of Tom Blackman on previous trips)

Hello birders:

We had a good start to our annual pelagic birding trip today. The seas are calm with very little wind. We saw many expected species on the first day, with the highlight being a red-footed booby. Some of our local species seen: black-vented and pink-footed shearwaters; black, ashy and least storm petrels; pomarine and long-tailed jaegers; common tern, brown booby; and Cassin’s auklets. We saw Risso’s dolphins and a fin whale too.

Risso’s dolphin by Tom Blackman
Grampus friseus

We are looking forward to tomorrow. With this weather I’m sure we will have a great day 2!

Capt Art and Team Searcher

We’re departing Monday, Labor Day, for our annual 5-day, targeting species in the southern California bight. Leaders include Todd McGrath, Dave Povey, Dave Pereksta, and Rob Hynson. Stay tuned to this space for the daily reports from the field!