[texbirds-freelists] [texbirds] SPI Gulf of Mexico Pelagic Trips this summer/fall (30 June, 28 July, 25 August)

From: Eric Carpenter <ecarpe@xxxxxxxxx>
To: texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:29:56 -0500
Texbirders and pelagic junkies,

I am pleased to announce that we will be running 3 pelagic birding
trips out of Port Isabel/South Padre Island this summer & fall.  The
dates for the trips are:

Saturday, June 30th (sign up by June 14th)
Saturday, July 28th (sign up by July 12th)
Saturday, August 25th (sign up by August 9th)

These are not-for-profit trip where the cost per participant is $150.

I would like to encourage anyone who is interested in these trips to
contact me (ecarpe@xxxxxxxxx) for more details and reservation info as
soon as is convenient. We need to have enough participants two and
half weeks in advance of each trip to ensure we can cover the cost of
the charter.

These trips leave from the southern tip of South Padre Island, aboard
the Osprey (http://ospreyfishingtrips.com/).   The good folks at the
Osprey have been involved with Texas pelagics for over a dozen 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 around 6am, and returning 12 hours later at 6pm.
We motor out to deepwater (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 Mary Gustafson, Brad McKinney, Petra Hockey, Randy
Pinkston, Dwight Peake and myself.  I've been out on the Gulf with
each of these folks multiple times and their passion for birds and
pelagics is on par with my own.

These Gulf of Mexico trips don't yield huge numbers of birds but we
seem to always make up for it with a high quality sighting or find.
Last year, we had great looks at a Red-billed Tropicbird on the July
trip.  Two years ago on the July trip we had crippling looks at a
Great Shearwater near the boat.  The year before, the headline was a
Sooty Shearwater sitting in the water right next to the boat, a first
for me in Texas waters.  Four summers ago, we had great looks at a
Great Shearwater on one trip, and a cooperative Long-tailed Jaeger on
the other trip. The year before that, it was the mixed species flock
that included a Brown Noddy & a Brown Booby.   And...I'm sure many of
you have heard me mention the Yellow-nosed Albatross we had in
2003...it is possibilities like that that keep me coming back for
more.

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 encounters with whale sharks, atlantic spotted
dolphins, risso's dolphins, short-fined pilot whales and even sperm
whales.  Last year's August trip yielded many of us our lifer
Rough-toothed Dolphins not to mention an experience with an absolutely
monstrous Whale Shark that still gives me goose-bumps - 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 wonderful website:

 http://www.texaspelagics.com/

I hope you'll join us.

--
Eric Carpenter
ecarpe@xxxxxxxxx
Austin

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[texbirds-freelists] [texbirds] SPI Gulf of Mexico Pelagic Trips this summer/fall (30 June, 28 July, 25 August)

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