Record Breaking Pelagic Birding Trip

This was a pelagic birding trip, but marine mammals are always spectacular, especially when like this Humpback Whale they put on a show at close range.

The same whale showing its humpback just before it showed its fluke.

Today I went on the Westport Seabirds pelagic trip on the Monte Carlo out of Westport, WA, and we found record numbers of birds. We went south of Westport off Willapa Canyon in Pacific County, to look for seabirds near a Hake processing boat and a fleet of fishing boats in that area. It worked out to be a great strategy. As a vegan I am somewhat bothered by the wasteful slaughter of incredible numbers of Pacific Whitefish, we saw lots just floating dead in the water when they spilled from the transfer bucket from the fishing boat to the processing boat, but as a birder that's where the fish-eating seabirds congregate so that's where we went.

This is one of the fishing ships supplying the processing ship. Look at all the birds following the boat to pick up scraps.

Here is a photo showing a sample of the massive flock of seabirds around these boats.

Look for the Black-footed Albatross (larger birds with white around the base of the bill), Sooty Shearwaters (most of the smaller all dark birds), Pink-footed Shearwaters (slightly larger shearwater with light underparts) and Sabine's Gulls (gulls with black, gray and white pattern).

To put these numbers in perspective, Westport Seabirds has been running and keeping records of pelagic birding trips out of Westport for over 25 years. They run numerous trips annually, and today we saw more Black-footed Albatrosses and Sabine's Gulls than had ever been seen on any of their prior trips. Official numbers have not been reported yet, but rough, immediately after the trip counts were 1730 Black-footed Albatrosses, 2765 Sabine's Gulls, 10730 Sooty Shearwaters, and 170 Pink-footed Albatross. These are all common pelagic species on these trips, but except for Sooty-shearwater they are usually seen in much lower numbers. I suspect a combination of good fortune on our part and the Hake Fleet accounts for the huge numbers.

Sabine's Gulls are one of our most beautiful gulls, with crisp black, gray and white plumage. They are almost exclusively seen at sea, and today we saw vast numbers at close range, including hearing their nighthawk-like call notes.

I had several personal highlights of the trip, in addition to experiencing the spectacle of numbers of birds. I saw my first ever Washington State Manx Shearwater early in the trip only a few miles from shore. No photos by me or anyone else that I know of as the bird quickly appeared and zipped past the bow of the boat. It is a small shearwater with crisply marked black upperparts and white underparts. They are seen occasionally in similar season and not too far from shore.

In addition I saw my first Washington State Long-tailed Jaeger. I got nice looks, but miserably poor photos. This is by far the least commonly seen of the three species of jaegers seen in Pacific waters. We had one Long-tailed today, along with 14 Parasitic Jaegers and 6 Pomerine Jaegers. We also saw two South-polar Skua, a close relative to the jaegers, for what is called the "Jaeger Grand Slam" by the Westport Seabird leaders.

A photo of a Parasitic Jaeger harassing a Sabine's Gull. It's out of focus, and backlit, but I like it for the silhouette of the tail shape, typical of a Parasitic Jaeger.

This is the South-polar Skua chasing a gull. The Skua is the largest of the four jaegers, and tends to rule the roost. It can get even large birds to disgorge their prey in a tail-chase, and the collect the food.

A slightly out of focus photo, but better shows the broad wings, prominent white wing patches, and overall shape of the South-polar Skua.

In addition I saw my first of the year birds of several other species.

Fork-tailed Storm-petrel. Our most common storm-petrel and the only storm-petrel that is light grey-blue colored. All the rest are primarily variations of black or gray and white.

In addition we saw one Laysan's Albatross. You can see it here to compare with the much more common Black-footed Albatross. The Laysan's is white below, somewhat larger, and looks a bit like a gigantic Western Gull.

Here is the Laysan's and Black-footed Albatross both resting on the water.

Pelagic birds are very special. I plan to make posts over the next few days highlighting each common north-pacific species we see here in WA that I have decent photos detailing their life histories and identification feathers.

This was a great day on the water.

Good birding. Steem on!