San Diego Bird Festival Pelagics
To The Coronados Islands |
February 9 and 10, 2008 (two separate trips)
Manx & Short-tailed Shearwaters |
| The volunteers of the San Diego Audubon are wrapping up another successful bird festival with wonderful trips, great leaders and nearly 400 registrants, all capped off Saturday evening by a fun banquet with an entertaining keynote talk by Kenn Kaufman entitled Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Sparrow.
The Saturday and Sunday pelagic boat trips to the 9-mile Bank and Los Coronados Islands were both resounding successes with well photographed highlights like MASKED BOOBY, MANX SHEARWATER, multiple SHORT-TAILED SHEARWATER, BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE, and more than FIFTEEN HUNDRED CASSIN'S AUKLET.
Mammals included several close Gray Whales each day, an enormous pod of 500 - 1000 Risso's Dolphin (the largest Todd McGrath has ever seen in the SoCal Bight), bow-riding Pacific White-Sided Dolphin, Common Dolphin and Bottlenose Dolphin.
The Coronados Islands high count of BROWN BOOBIES was Saturday with 20 on Middle Rock and one in flight several miles north of the islands for a total of 21. Not seen on Middle Rock Saturday, but present Sunday, was a MASKED BOOBY.
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| The Coronados Islands high count of oystercatchers was Sunday with 18 Black, 2 "American" and 4 hybrids.
Two-day totals of other species of interest (to us):
5-7 Northern Fulmar
2-3 Short-tailed Shearwater (Mexico)
1 Manx Shearwater (San Diego)
1 Pink-footed Shearwater (Mexico)
7-8 Black-vented Shearwater
38 Bonaparte's Gull
3 Mew Gull
2 Herring Gull
1 Thayer's Gull
4 Glaucous-winged Gull
1 Black-legged Kittiwake (Mexico)
7 Pom Jaeger
1 Jaeger sp
1 Masked Booby (Mexico)
20 Brown Boobies Mexico)
19 Xantus's Murrelet (scrippsi) (Mexico & US)
1,530 Cassin's Auklet
29 Rhino Auklet
Both trips were 6.5 hours in duration. The most productive life-zone was over Coronado Canyon, a deep submarine canyon south of the 9-mile bank.
DID YOU KNOW? The San Diego Manx Shearwater was Guy McCaskie's San Diego County #480.
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