The San Diego pelagic trip on Sunday the 14th out to the 9-Mile & 30-Mile Banks and “The Corner” and sponsored by Buena Vista Audubon Society was blessed with fine weather and very light seas. The rarest bird of the trip was a STREAKED SHEARWATER!
At 2:47 PM while heading back east in the eastern San Diego Trough (16-1/2 mi WSW of Point Loma) just several observers saw a shearwater make a quick pass off the right side of the boat, in somewhat harsh lighting, and called out that they had an odd-looking Pink-footed type bird with a distinctly pale face. The bird quickly continued on and disappeared. The only person to obtain photos was Alex Abela, whose camera that day was seriously acting up, so the quality suffered somewhat. Studying the photos on the back of the camera immediately thereafter, it did appear that the bird was a very good candidate to be a Streaked Shearwater, a Japanese species that is casual in California waters, primarily off northern California and almost all from September and October, with at least a couple mid-August records, the earliest of which was on 13 August back in the 1980s way inland at Red Bluff in the northern Sacramento Valley. So this bird would be even a month earlier than that. Following a little bit of photo brightness improvement and sharing with several folks with more extensive experience with the species, the consensus is unanimous that the bird is indeed a Streaked Shearwater.
The second rarest bird of the trip was the Guadalupe Murrelet in the San Diego Trough, some 20.8 mi WSW of the tip of Point Loma. We also had a single white-rumped Townsend’s Storm-Petrel with small numbers of “Chapman’s” Leach’s and Ashy Storm-Petrels (plus the usual Blacks) mostly out at the 30-Mile Bank, as well a number of Craveri’s Murrelets and also multiple Scripps’s Murrelet families with largish chicks, a rare Black Tern, 4 Common Murres, and 2 Brown Boobies.
Totals for the trip once we were at least a mile offshore are as follows:
- Marbled Godwit 2
- Western Sandpiper 120
- Common Murre 4 (rare; inshore waters and Nine-Mile Bank)
- Scripps’s Murrelet 11 (included three family groups with various-sized chicks)
- GUADALUPE MURRELET 1 (very rare; SD Trough, 32.612, -117.594)
- Craveri’s Murrelet 9
- murrelet sp. 8
- Cassin’s Auklet 16
- Heermann’s Gull 2
- Western Gull 70
- Black Tern 1 (rare, alternate plumage, Nine-Mile Bank, 10 mi W of Point Loma)
- Common Tern 5
- Royal Tern 4
- Elegant Tern 300
- Leach’s Storm-Petrel 5 (all looked like mostly dark-rumped “Chapman’s” types, 30-Mile Bank & The Corner)
- Townsend’s Storm-Petrel 1 (white-rumped, s. 30-Mile Bank)
- Ashy Storm-Petrel 7
- Black Storm-Petrel 140
- STREAKED SHEARWATER 1
- Sooty Shearwater 1900
- Pink-footed Shearwater 55
- Black-vented Shearwater 270
- Brown Booby 2 (both looked like adult females)
- Brandt’s Cormorant 3
- Brown Pelican 30
- Brown-headed Cowbird 1 (male well offshore in SD Trough)
- Also: Risso’s Dolphins
Paul Lehman, Dave Povey, Nancy Christensen, Alex Abela, Dan Jehl, Jimmy McMorran, San Diego
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