It rained pretty hard here overnight and in the early AM (Coos Bay). Later
in the AM I drove down to Bastendorff Beach just in time for no more rain.
I saw hundreds of gulls on the beach there but not anything out of the
normal offshore. I then ran into Larry Goodhew who had come over for the
cancelled pelagic. He said he had seen a couple of possible Black-venteds
yesterday and that Mike and MerryLynn Denny had seen a couple from Cape
Arago yesterday. We decided to head over to Cape Arago.
At Cape Arago the wind was still blowing 20mph+ from the SW but there was
no more rain and visibility was pretty good. The swells were large out on
the ocean. We scoped for about an hour. It started slow but eventually I
picked up some white-bellied shearwaters far offshore. Unfortunately the
flight style was all wrong for Black-vented and they appeared a bit larger
and were not flapping much. I suspect they were all Pink-footed (not white
enough on the underwings for Bullers). The visibility got better and better
and we had some blue skies. I decided to focus closer to shore where the
green water met the blue water which was past the reef a bit. Pretty
quickly I spotted my first BLACK-VENTED SHEARWATER. I thought maybe it was
a loon as it was flapping so much but when they banked and glided you could
see the all dark shearwater upper-wing profile. We continued watching that
area and every few minutes we would see another and another then three then
six together at the end of the hour. They were fairly close and all
flapped more than they glided and I could see dark undertail coverts on
most of them- the visibility was great. I had a better scope and Larry had
good looks at one and was very excited as he had much better looks than
yesterday. I also had much better views than I did at Bandon on the 8th
when really what we saw we small white-bellied shearwaters (most likely
Black-vented of course!). I saw a total of 14 BLACK-VENTEDS- no other
shearwater sp. were as close to shore as they were. Further out there was
a long line of shearwaters way out I could not make out but I did see about
a dozen Pink-footeds and several Sooties. Flight styles were remarkably
different between the Pink-footeds which glide a lot and only flapped
occasionally and the Black-venteds that flapped so much I thought they were
loons sometimes! Anyhow, fantastics looks off Cape Arago from 1200-1300.
Also saw about a dozen MARBLED MURRELETS and plenty of C. Murres. We had
an adult BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE parked offshore that we watch circle for
the whole hour we were scoping. Did see some distant dark small alcids that
were not Rhinos (smaller) but just couldn't make them out (white bellied
but hard to say on species). The swells were huge so it was not ideal
alcid viewing conditions. It would have been a horrible day to be out on a
small boat...
Merry migration!
Tim R
Coos Bay
