San Diego Day Trip : Nine Mile Bank
31 AUG 2010

By Matt Sadowski

Dave Povey, Jay Keller, BJ Stacey, and I headed out to the nine-mile bank from Mission Bay. Four Pacific Loons flying north were unusual. We managed to pick out a few Leasts among the Black Storm-Petrels. More interesting were three Leach's (two dark, one intermediate) at the upper nine-mile. On the nine-mile we encountered a raft of 800+ Black Storm-Petrels. Before we had a chance to look through them a juvenile MASKED/NAZCA BOOBY (32.631, -117.412) flew through the gulls behind the boat and continued south. BJ was able to get several photos and will post a link. It had an incomplete collar suggesting a Nazca but this is not definitive. We gave chase and ended up checking booby rock at the Coronados where we counted 47 Brown Boobies but no Masked/Nazca type.

Interestingly a Masked/Nazca was photographed by a researcher on the nine-mile on 23 July this year. 

From Mission Bay out to upper nine-mile finger and down to about 3 nm north of border:

Pacific Loon - 4
Pink-footed Shearwater - 61
Sooty Shearwater - 14
Leach's Storm-Petrel (dark-rumped) - 2
Leach's Storm-Petrel (intermediate-rumped) - 1
Black Storm-Petrel - 900
Least Storm-Petrel - 5
Masked/Nazca Booby - 1
Brandt's Cormorant - 3
Double-crested Cormorant - 3
cormorant sp. - 2
Brown Pelican - 83
Red-necked Phalarope - 66
Red Phalarope - 2
Herrmann's Gull - 2
Western Gull - 40
Elegant Tern - 33
Common Tern - 2
Pomarine Jaeger - 2