On 15MAR09 we took a Sunday drive out to sea in Dave Povey's 21 foot Parker fishing boat and saw 3 flavors of Northern Fulmar off La Jolla, the light-morph which has been hanging around all winter, an intermediate morph and a dark morph. Then we enjoyed home-made Choco-chip cookies until we couldn’t eat any more.
We saw 2 Parasitic Jaegers and 3 Pom Jaegers. We saw 70 Rhinoceros Auklets which would be spectacular in any winter except the last two. We had a Northern Fulmar plop down right behind the boat to look for the food it KNEW had to be there from all the fuss the gulls were making over our stale popcorn chum.
We encountered a thousand ghostly fairies dancing a delicate choreographed ballet over the ocean (Bonaparte’s Gulls) accompanied by an enormous flock of more than 2000 California Gulls about 4 miles west of Stan’s Bench at La Jolla Cove, but we couldn’t see Stan.
We saw a hummingbird about 4 miles out going south. Yes, we saw cool things out there including a hundred Saddleback Dolphin and a Pacific White-sided Dolphin that came by the boat to say “hi.” You can see these cool things, too, on April 4 because we’re going to do it again, all together, on Grande. Details and registration info on the trip:
http://www.socalbirding.com/upcomingtrips/sandiegoapr42009.html
Observation date: 3/15/09
Notes: 6 hour pelagic within 5 miles of coast from Shelter Island to La Jolla Canyon. Began 57 degrees, mostly cloudy. Ended 60 degrees, mostly sunny. Water temp 57 degrees. Paul Lehman, Barbie Carlson, Dave Povey, Terry Hunefeld
Number of species: 29
Surf Scoter 12
Pacific Loon 3
Eared Grebe 4
Northern Fulmar 3
Sooty Shearwater 2
Black-vented Shearwater 4
Brown Pelican 75
Brandt's Cormorant 250
Double-crested Cormorant 3
Pelagic Cormorant 1
Osprey 2
Black Oystercatcher 1
Black Turnstone 1
Surfbird 1
Sanderling 1
Bonaparte's Gull 1000
Heermann's Gull 130
Ring-billed Gull 2
Western Gull 350
California Gull 2300
Forster's Tern 150
Royal Tern 4
Elegant Tern 16
Pomarine Jaeger 3
Parasitic Jaeger 2
Pomarine/Parasitic Jaeger 1
Cassin's Auklet 4
Rhinoceros Auklet 70
hummingbird sp. 1
W. Terry Hunefeld, Encinitas
Life is short.
Seabird and eBird often.
Seabirding Trips From San Diego
Buena Vista Audubon Society
http://www.SoCalBirding.com
Los Coronados Islands
Nine-mile, Thirty-mile, Sixty-mile Banks
Cortes & Tanner Banks
Channel Islands
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