I tend to ignore unidentifiables when I am doing a seawatch. Thus I report only
identified birds. Hundreds of little white specks and big brown blobs go
blasting by out there.
My personal limit on a seawatch is about 45 minutes, at which point I take a
break for five or ten and then can do another half hour or so.
Alan Contreras
Eugene, Oregon
acontrer56@xxxxxxxxx
Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 1, 2015, at 5:54 PM, Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi again Tim & all,
A brief follow-up here since I realized that the questions in your reply must
have been aimed at Phil rather than at me.
I kind of agree in terms of level of patience for staring through a scope,
but my understanding is that Phil usually just does these sea watches for 1-2
hours in a stint.
Beyond that, I'll have to refer your questions on to Phil. I'm still happy if
I can pick out a few Sooty Shearwaters among the gulls offshore, when I
manage to get out to the coast.
Cheers,
Joel
On Sun, 2015-11-01 at 17:29 -0800, Tim Rodenkirk wrote:
Just curious, excuse me for my ignorance. I admit to not really liking
offshore scoping, sitting in one spot all day just isn't my thing. That
said, I have spent up to a couple hours scoping before (its brutal)! Anyhow,
I see your list and if it was mine (a much less experienced pelagic
observer) I would have all sorts of stuff like shearwater sp. 1000, loon sp.
1000. etc. Did you leave those off? Are you sure you didn't see any RN
Phalaropes (they are hard to ID when they fly by the boat on pelagic trips
sometimes!)? Etc. etc. When I scope, it seems like I can't ID half the stuff
because it is so far off, but maybe you can ID everything at Boiler Bay. I
imagine you are just doing estimates of what you did see and going from
there. But to see no XX species sp. seems a bit amazing (maybe you report
those separately?).
My two cents (don't throw the tomatoes to hard),
Tim R
Coos Bay
On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 5:03 PM, Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx> wrote:Hi Tom, Phil & All,
Not true about the scopolamine, Tom, I got seasick just reading this!
But maybe that's just because my one pelagic trip (out of Depoe Bay on an
extremely choppy winter day, as a birthday present -- one of Greg Gillson's
trips, co-guided by Matt Hunter). I still wonder if there was any connection
between that birthday present and the life insurance policy that I took out
not long before that ;-)
It wound up with nearly every single birder except me, Paula Vanderheul, Amy
Schoener, and Terry Steele turning green and puking over the railing. Paula,
Amy and I stayed clear of that by riding on the front end of the boat, so we
froze half to death, but at least we didn't get sick. I tried to go in the
cabin to warm up once but I immediately started feeling sick, so I went back
out on deck and stayed there for the rest of the trip.
I'm not sure how Terry did it since it was also his first time offshore on a
small boat, but he did even better, chopping chum while most of the rest of
the paying passengers were volunteering their own chum over the railing.
Terry and I were the only ones still on deck when we picked up a Fork-tailed
Storm-Petrel pedaling off over the water. A little farther on I spotted what
I called out as a Xantus's Murrelet (well honestly I had no idea so that was
my best guess). But the captain backed up to the GPS coordinates where I
called it out, and it turned out to be a very cooperative Ancient Murrelet
that swam past the boat along both sides, not more than 30 feet out.
Even the folks who were still green around the gills dragged themselves out
of the cabin and got to see close-up views of an Ancient Murrelet. I sure
hope that compensated for the rest of the "pelagic experience"!!!
Anyway Phil, good spotting! In my view this is the way that smart people do
their pelagic birding.
Happy birding,
Joel
That's quite the pelagic trip, Phil, no scopolamine required. Nice finds!
-----Original Message-----
Phil Pickering wrote:
Boiler Bay
1 LAYSAN ALBATROSS (distant seen by Peter)
2 BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS
8000+ Northern Fulmar (steady 10-50/minute most
beyond 1 mile, very roughly 10% pale-end)
1 Buller's Shearwater (Christopher)
500+ Pink-footed Shearwater (many close in early
but then shifting further and further out, only a
few detected after 10:30)
1 BLACK-VENTED SHEARWATER
1+ Short-tailed Shearwater
2000+ Sooty Shearwater
12 Leach's Storm-Petrel
5 Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel
8000+ Red Phalarope (increasing late)
1 LONG-TAILED JAEGER (Peter)
9 Parasitic Jaeger
56 Pomarine Jaeger (increasing late)
8 jaeger sp.
1 Sabine' Gull
24 Ancient Murrelet
80 Marbled Murrelet (most S)
80 Cassin's Auklet
16 Rhinoceros Auklet
