Pelagification!

Camping on Saturday night at MacKerricher State Park was great. I got to sleep at about 10pm, which was perfect for how much sleep I'd need for my long day Sunday. The only problem was that even though it did not rain overnight, it is so humid and foggy on the coast that the trees dripped as if it had rained all night, soaking my stuff. This was the view from my campsite:


I got myself together at 5:30AM and headed to Noyo Harbor in Ft. Bragg, CA to meet the Telstar and the Shearwater crew. There were about 30 of us on board the charter fishing vessel, and we headed out in complete fog. Within the first couple miles offshore, we were seeing an incredible number of COMMON MURRE. The sheer number of them helped me get comfortable with this species. Pretty soon, one of the crew members was dropping popcorn off the stern to attract gulls, and later, cut up bait. This worked, and shortly thereafter, BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS joined the trail. At one point, we saw as many as 60 of these. In the picture below are the albatross, as well as a gray race NORTHERN FULMAR in the bottom right.


As the day went on, we started seeing some shearwaters. I got great looks at PINK-FOOTED SHEARWATER, BULLER'S SHEARWATER, and the rarer FLESH-FOOTED SHEARWATER. Unfortunately, a SOOTY SHEARWATER had been seen a couple of times, but I was not able to get on it. POMARINE JAEGER was another species that I dropped the ball on. Although I had looked at about 15 of them, I missed the field marks each time.


As the day went on, the diminutive CASSIN'S AUKLET and RHINOCEROS AUKLET would get scared by the boat, and try to fly away. Some succeeded, and I think the younger ones just did a half swim/fly thing to the best of their ability.


Marine mammals also showed themselves. We got close looks at white-sided dolphin, harbor seal, and near the end of the day, two breaching humpback whales. We thought that was the frosting at the end of our 11-hour day at sea. Instead, it was close looks at ANCIENT MURRELET. These are a fantastic bird, even more than the drab winter-plumed, but great-named rhinos.



After that successful trip (which many of the pelagsperts say was a not very diverse day, due to it being the last trip of the season), I took the advise from one of the local birders I was talking to on the boat, and headed back to MacKerricher. I didn't come across the PACIFIC GOLDEN-PLOVER that he said had been seen recently, but did get a BLACK TURNSTONE.

As it got dark, I headed over to my couchsurfing host, Ted's house. He lives right on the water, just a mile north of MacKerricher State Park. His house was beautiful, and I had dinner with Ted and his friend who was in town. They are both Buddhists, which set the tone for some very calm and interesting conversations. This morning, since Ted was really interested in the notion of birding, he came with me to bird along the beach in front of his house, which coincidently was a place suggested to me by the local expert on the boat. There was a big pack of large and small plovers. Try as I might, they were BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS and SNOWY PLOVERS, and not the PACIFIC I was hoping for. Regardless, conversations with Ted were incredible. He has this ability to frame things, and ask questions unobtrusively in a way that made me question a lot of what I do and why I do it. Rather Socratic.

I left there at about 11AM today after another great vegan meal, and started heading up the coast. It's been rainy all day, so I haven't been birding the rocy cliffs as much as I'd like to. There's always tomorrow... and the next day... and...