[texbirds] Upcoming Texas Pelagics for 2014

From: "Garett Hodne" <garyhodne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Texbirds Posts" <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2014 15:24:12 -0500
Texbirders and pelagic  fanatics,

Eric Carpenter is taking a well-deserved break from organizing the Texas
Pelagics this year so I have volunteered to organize them for this year. 
 
I am pleased to announce that there will be 3 pelagic birding trips out of
Port Isabel/South Padre Island this summer & fall.  The dates for the trips
are:
 
 Sat July 19th (sign up deadline by July 2nd)
 Sat August 16th (sign up deadline by July 30th)
 Sat September 20th  (sign up by September 3rd)
 
These are not-for-profit trips that I am organizing where the cost per
participant is $150. 
 
I would like to encourage anyone who is interested in these trips to email
me at garyhodne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx  for more details and reservations soon as
possible. We need to have twenty-five participants two and half weeks in
advance of each trip to ensure we can cover the cost of the charter.
Without enough participants by the deadline the trip may have to be
cancelled. For cancellations due to not enough participants or rough seas
preventing the trip from going full refunds will be made.
 
These trips leave from the southern tip of South Padre Island, aboard the
Osprey  ( http://ospreycruises.com/osprey-fishing-trips/ ).   The good folks
at Osprey Cruises have been involved with Texas Pelagics for over 14 years
and their captains are familiar with where we need to go and also are quite
good at spotting birds with us.   These are all-day trips, leaving the docks
at 6am, and returning 12 hours later at 6pm. We motor out to deep-water
(takes a couple hours to get there), spend the next several hours working
the area just off the shelf, and then return back to dry land by around 6pm.
 Leaders for these three trips will include Eric Carpenter, Mary Gustafson,
Brad McKinney, Petra Hockey, Randy Pinkston and myself.  Each of these
leaders are passionate about Texas Pelagics and have more experience on than
anyone else in the offshore Texas Gulf of Mexico.
 
These Gulf of Mexico trips don't yield gaudy numbers of birds but we seem to
always make up for it with a high quality sighting or discovery. In the last
few years, some of the better birds have
included Red-billed Tropicbird, Great Shearwater, and Sooty Shearwater.  One
trip was fortunate enough to have a mixed species flock that included both
Brown Noddy and Brown Booby in the same binocular view/camera viewfinder!
 And of course in Sept 2003 we had an incredible Yellow-nosed Albatross
encounter!  Possibilities like this is what keeps folks coming back
for more.  The regular species we expect to find during the course of the
season include Audubon's and Cory's Shearwaters, Band-rumped and Leach's
Storm-Petrels, Bridled and Sooty Terns, Masked Booby, Pomarine Jaeger and
Magnificent Frigatebird. 
 
A full rundown of the species list for Offshore Texas Pelagics can be found
at:

http://texaspelagics.com/pelagic-sea-birds/tx-seabirds/ 

And of course, when there aren't great birds around, sometimes other marine
life activity steals the show.  We routinely get Bottlenose Dolphins plus
have had frequent encounters with Whale Sharks, Atlantic spotted dolphins,
Risso's Dolphins, Short-fined Pilot Whales and even pods of Sperm Whales on
multiple occasions.  The August trip from three years ago yielded many of us
our
lifer Rough-toothed Dolphins not to mention an experience with an absolutely
monstrous Whale Shark that bumped into the boat, check out the photos of it
about half-way through the slide-show from that trip at:

http://www.texaspelagics.com/trips/20110827/index.html

More information on these trips and on Texas Pelagics (including photos from
previous trips and what species can be expected) can be found at Gary
Hodne's informative website:

http://www.texaspelagics.com/

Also there is a Facebook page for Texas Pelagics.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Texas-Pelagics/173057036078295?ref=hl

And a Facebook group for Texas Pelagics. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/219671194850690/

Please check these out for more information as well

I hope you'll join us.
 
Gary Hodne
The Woodlands, TX

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[texbirds] Upcoming Texas Pelagics for 2014

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