[texbirds] SPI pelagic results 25 August 2012

Good afternoon,

The season’s final lower coast pelagic off South Padre Island was a success, as trip organizer Eric Carpenter pulled off another squeeze play with Mother Nature. With projected seas in the 4-6 range all week, the wind dropped enough on Friday evening to produce manageable swells in the 2-4 foot range for most of the day on Saturday. By 8:15 am, we swung by the first of several several shrimp boats on the way out to deepwater and were rewarded with excellent looks at both male Magnificent Frigatebird and juvenile Masked Booby (see link below). In addition to the frigatebird, the near shore shrimp boats attracted Laughing Gulls, Royal and Sandwich Terns and at least 35 bottlenose dolphins, including several youngsters. Common, Least and Black Terns were seen sporadically in the blue water along the shelf. As we approached the final shrimp boat at 45 miles offshore, we had two jaeger sp., another Magnificent Frigatebird, and a flyby Northern Roughwing Swallow, surprisingly one of the only migrant passerines seen during the day. We reached the 100-fathom curve around noon, somewhat delayed by the rough seas. Just after 1:00pm we had our first shearwater of the day, a Cory’s.  By 1:30 pm we had good looks two more Cory’s Shearwaters, a dozen Sooty Terns over a tuna school, including two all-black juveniles, and two Audubon’s Shearwaters.

 

Flying fish were seen throughout. Other interesting finds included a green sea turtle , a young wahoo fish and a five-foot cobia fish.  The species list in this summary is not presumed to be all inclusive or official, as some observers may have observed things that I did not. Please let me know of any omissions or revisions.

Seabird summary:
Cory’s Shearwater (3)
Audubon’s Shearwater (2)
Masked Booby (3)
Magnificent Frigatebird (2)
Sooty Tern (12)

Below is a link to some photos.

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