For those interested, I have attached a gallery of photos from 3 pelagic
trips I did off Bodega Bay, Calif in late August. It only took 7 weeks or
so to go through 6000 photos! Long story, but thanks to Chris Sloan, I
ended up on a private charter led by Steve Howell, Dave Pereksta, and Ken
Peterson. Six birders on the boat, total. It doesn't get any better than
that for my first pelagic trips!
These were the trips that you may have read about on the ABA Blog in late
Aug as we had Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrels (very rare north of Mexico, ~15
ABA records). Unfortunately Steve Howell only photographed them while
shooting flocks of storm-petrels (on 2 different days!) and never actually
saw one. A couple guys saw one flying away on one day, but I didn't see,
nor photograph any (plenty of Wilson's Storm-Petrels though!). I got a
bunch of lifers and ABA birds and it was awesome except for the 6-8 ft seas
the first day (I kept my lunch down, amazingly).
Highlights were Guadalupe and Scripps's Murrelets, Sabine's Gulls, South
Polar Skua, Buller's Shearwater (one of the most gorgeous birds ever), and
we saw 40-50% of all the Ashy Storm-Petrels in the world one day! Everyone
else saw a few Arctic Terns flying over, but I never saw any well enough to
actually ID them, so I didn't count them. 100,000+ sooty shearwaters in
the harbor was pretty amazing too.
http://www.pbase.com/shoeman/bodega_bay_aug_15
Of course, in the last two weeks, I got that lifer Arctic Tern, and added
Sabine's Gull and Red Phalarope to my Colorado list, all only 15 min from
my house!
A few other fall photos are at the gallery below, incl the cooperative
Arctic Tern. A Ruddy Turnstone this week got all the birders in the state
all worked up. They are maybe annual in Colorado so the twitchers were
out. Quite the amazing checklist with Arctic Tern, Sabine's Gull,
Red-necked Grebe, and Ruddy Turnstone!
http://www.pbase.com/shoeman/colorado_fall_2015
I hope to make it back to Tennessee next May for some warbling with TN
friends!
Good birding,
Scott Somershoe
