SoCalBirding.com

By: Terry Hunefeld

June 6, 2009 was the annual Los Angeles Audubon Society Island Scrub-Jay/pelagic trip. We left Oxnard harbor at approximately 8:00 a.m. aboard the Island Packer’s boat, Vanguard.

On the way to Santa Cruz Island we saw hundreds of Sooty Shearwaters and enjoyed satisfying close encounters with a handful of Pink-footeds.  We saw nearly a dozen distant, jumpy Xantus’s Murrelets, and finally found one that would sit still long enough to get our many out-of-state guests excellent looks. 

A highlight of this portion of the trip was when senior leader Todd McGrath sighted two BLUE WHALES in the distance, then worked with the captain to get Vanguard so close that they surfaced right at the boat!  All participants had great close up views of the massive blow holes and tiny dorsal fins.  Blue Whales are the largest of the baleen whales and are the largest animals ever to have lived. Baleen whales are larger than the toothed whales and have two blow holes. 

Senior Leader Todd McGrath gave color commentary on Blue Whales, relating that they have hearts the size of Volkswagen Beetles and aortas large enough for a human to crawl through.  The largest recorded Blue Whale was 134 feet long.  Adult females here average 70 to 80 feet long with females slightly larger than males.  Baleen whales have baleen plates instead of teeth, which they use to filter small particles of food, especially krill, a shrimp-like crustacean also favored by tiny Cassin’s Auklets – so there you have one of the smallest animals on the world sharing the same diet with the largest animal ever to have lived on the face of they earth (yes, much larger than the largest dinosaurs).  

When we arrived at Prisoner’s Harbor, we explored the island for about an hour looking for Island Scrub-Jays (we found three after a 20 minute search) then re-boarded Vanguard and motored east, then south, along the north and east sides of Santa Cruz Island observing Pelagic Cormorants, Black Oystercatchers and Pigeon Guillemots as leader Dave Pereksta, a senior official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, brought participants up to speed on the conservation efforts and successes on the Channel Islands.

We observed upwards of 40 Pigeon Guillemots, a species that breeds on the Channel Islands in the summer then migrates… well, in his book Ocean Birds Of the Near Shore Pacific, Richard Stallcup says, “The wonderful part is that nobody knows for sure where they go.”  He then sticks his neck out by continuing, “It is highly doubtful they go east, as the high deserts of Nevada and Utah are not suitable for an alcid’s foraging abilities…”  Experts are pretty sure Pigeon Guillemots migrate north in the winter to waters offshore Oregon and Washington and beyond (although exactly where they go in the winter is still somewhat of a mystery). 

We sailed south of the gap between Santa Cruz and Anacapa Islands via the Anacapa Passage, observing lots more Sooty Shearwaters and nearly a dozen Pink-footeds.  The day’s highlight came when, just 2 miles south of Anacapa Island, a BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS thrilled all the participants with repeated fly-bys and put-downs in the wake, absolutely convinced that the raucous gulls were on to something, but unable to find anything but popcorn. 

It was a perfect day at sea.  The was a bit of chop in the water, but seas were calm and everybody aboard seemed very comfortable.   Everybody saw Island Scrub-Jays, Blue Whales and a Black-footed Albatross.

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