By Dave Povey
Peter Ginsburg, Gerald Kooyman, Thomas Blackman, and I ran offshore Tuesday Jan. 12th. Our first stop was to look at the female Long-tailed Duck at Ballast Point. The cobble beach there had 4 Black Oystercatchers and a American x Black. One of two 'white bellied' oystercatchers being seen in this area, this was the less well-defined bird. The submarine base has an Osprey attending a nest.
A mile or so out of the harbor we saw a Parasitic Jaeger, the only jaeger of the day. Around three miles out we started to see the first of many Cassin's Auklets. We had two areas where that species was concentrated. The area between Point Loma and the middle of the Nine Mile Bank, and the south end of the Nine Mile, the Coronado Canyon, and out to the southwest. In truth that species was seen almost everywhere away from the beach. I counted 900 within the 200-300 yard range, but we could see them in groups out to the horizon. I'd very conservatively say we saw 1200. Pete said we could have doubled the original number and been closer. I would not argue that.
As a side note, taken with the Cassin's seen on the Oceanside Christmas bird count (286), the New Years Day pelagic to the Nine Mile Bank and into La Jolla Canyon (140) and our Nov. 23,2009 tally of 1500 I'd say there are multiple thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Cassin's Auklets in San Diego County and northern Mexican Waters right now.
What's changed? Two things come to mind:
1) There is plenty of food (krill). The birds seem healthy. Few if any are washing up on the beach, and numbers seem to be on the increase.
2) The offshore sea surface temps seem to be near normal. The 1990's were years of hot sea surface temps, the last ten years sea-surface temp seem to be closer to normal. The 2008-2009 winter waters were cooler than normal.
Whatever benefit the Cassin's have gotten is not the same for Rhinoceros Auklet (17 on this trip). This species is clearly down from the last two years.
We saw two dark-bellied Shearwaters on the bank, both appeared to be Sooties. Pink-footeds were very in good numbers for this time of year with 8
N. Fulmars have all but gone; we only saw two. (One with very worn looking plumage.) A Black-vented Shearwater with a mostly white body and patches of white in the wings was seen briefly. Most of the Black-vents seem to be further offshore than I'd usually expect.
A lone Red Phalarope was west of North Coronado Island. 2 immature Brown Boobies were seen separately on the Nine Mile Bank. Two adult male Brown Boobies were plunge diving around a pod of Common Dolphin west of the Islands and 23 more Brown Boobies were with the "Booby Colony" on Middle Rock. Two adults were on nest.
A one point in the morning the sea surface looked oily. SST 59.8 - 62.3 I think that's a bit warm for this time of year.
We saw one Blue Shark and a Mola Mola
|
