I know a lot of people who wait anxiously on the Texas Pelagics trip reports to
hear about what great birds we saw and to see what they may have missed. So I'm
going to post a quick summary for all those folks. The full report will be out
later this week.
First we enjoyed great weather, calm 1 to 2 foot sea swell all day long with
very light winds for much of the day leaving the seas that pleasant glassy look
with hardly a wind ripple all morning and early afternoon.
We departed at 3:00 am and reached the shelf edge shortly after a ~7:00 am
sunrise where a bunch of the bow riding birders saw the green flash! We
anxiously waited our first pelagic species. We had a few pelagic birds near the
shelf edge and upper slope but it wasn't until we got to really deep waters
closer to the Camel's head that the action really exploded. Here in Mexican
waters we had a huge flock of 82 Sooty Terns, 14 Cory's Shearwaters, 10
Audubon's Shearwaters, 3 Sperm Whales and a tuna school. We had several other
flocks of Sooties and Shearwaters and another pod of 7-8 Sperm Whales including
two huge breaches of sperms that came clear out of the water!!!
It was a spectacular day with all of the action restricted to deep water far
out from the shelf edge.
Here is the preliminary Summary:
7 Species Pelagic Seabirds:
Cory's Shearwaters - 22
Audubon's Shearwaters - 14
Band-rumpled Storm-Petrels - 4
Brown Booby - 1
Sooty Terns - 174
Bridled Terns - 2
Magnificent Frigatebird - 7
Marine Mammals:
Bottlenose Dolphins - many
Atlantic Spotted Dolphins - many
Sperm Whales - 10
Poss beaked whale sp - 1
We also had numerous migrants and other nearshore Seabirds, details in the full
report.
Good seabirding,
Gary Hodne
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