Cuvier's Beaked-Whales and Pelagic Seabirds in New York

July 2019: A way offshore pelagic from Brooklyn in July

Looking back at the blog, I seem to have stopped writing about my local birding and natural history adventures.  I guess the world-birder-travel stuff seems so much more exciting, and the local trips perhaps seems repetitive year-to-year.  But I still get out locally most weekends when I'm in New York, so here's something from closer to home.

Monday, July 22 - 130 miles South of Brooklyn

For most of my 28 years living in New York, pelagic trips were an exercise in futility.  The gulf stream, warm water, and most interesting birds are a very long way from shore in New York.  In North Carolina you can be looking at a wide range of pelagic species an hour from the dock, but in New York you have to steam for 8 hours overnight to get into good water and stand a decent chance of seeing good birds.  For years, folks tried to see things closer in ... I chartered a few boats myself with mixed results ... and then an enterprising chap called Paul Guris got it all properly worked out.

Paul (and his better half, the lovely Anita) is a sea-birding impresario who puts together pelagic trips along the East Coast, mostly in New York and New Jersey.  In my opinion, he single-handedly turned New York pelagic birding from futile to productive over the course of the last five or six years.  Boats now get regularly filled, get out to good waters for decent amounts of time, and see excellent birds.  Indeed over the last few years, Paul's "Paulagics" have turned up Fea's Petrel, Trinidade Petrel and made previously mega birds like White-faced and Band-rumped Storm-Petrels and Black-capped Petrel into regular, gettable birds in New York.

Wilson's Storm-Petrels

This year the boat captains have been making things difficult but when the opportunity to sail on a July 'Paulagic' came up, I signed up quickly.

I should say straight up, I am not a good sailor.  I have been seasick on pelagic boats all over the world, and may unfortunately be semi-famous for it.  I have never been on a Brian Patteson trip in North Carolina without contributing to the chum line and have even failed to hold it together on the relatively placid waters of Monterey Bay.  But 'you don't look, you don't see' so I keep going, keep optimistically taking my dramamine (which unfortunately usually puts me to sleep for half of the trip) and keep soldiering on.  Sea-birds are important ... and cetaceans are even better.

So 9pm Sunday night and off we go again (how do you spend your Sunday nights?).  There's a certain amount of socializing on these trips as they gather together a broad group of New York birders who don't get to see each other every week, but I tend to try to find a quiet bench and spread my sleeping bag early.  Once I've taken my dramamine I'm down for the count, and sleep most of the night, but this time I was vaguely aware that it wasn't the smoothest passage out to the deep water.  Turns out we passed through several thunder storms and took a detour around others, but by dawn we were out where we wanted to be ... over 7,000 feet of water, 130 miles South of New York City.

As the sun came up, the steel gray waters were choppy and the smell of diesel and chum permeated everything on the boat.  I frankly felt somewhat queasy all morning, even passing on the egg and cheese sandwiches that they cooked up in the galley (and I love egg and cheese sandwiches).  But there's something special about dawn on a pelagic trip and, no matter how awful you feel, the excitement of being out there in the deep water takes over and we all staggered to the railing, ready to bird.

Leach's Petrels only show up close to dawn.  It's a strange fact and I'm not sure it applies everywhere, but on New York pelagic trips, the Leach's Petrels are typically seen early in the low light, and then vanish mysteriously.  I'm not sure why, or where they go, but for veteran pelagic birders, the first half hour on the chum slick is Leach's Petrel time and sure enough, they showed up on cue that morning.  A few Band-rumped Petrels showed up too so we got a quick reminder on ID by 'jiz' with the bouncing flight of the Leach's contrasting with the purposeful direct fight of the Band-rumped.

Leach's Petrel

Then, over the next few hours we slowly filled out the list of pelagic birds.  The numbers weren't big, but we got most of the species we expected.  There were a few Great Shearwaters, a couple of Cory's Shearwaters and Audubon's Shearwaters along with a single Manx Shearwater surprisingly far offshore.  An hour or so in I picked up a fast moving back and white bird and called it, but blanked on the name, even though I knew what it was ... Black-capped Petrel.  This species used to be a 'mega' for New York but it's now seen regularly and annually on these trips so we've all gotten a little blasé about them.  Still, in global terms, a very rare bird and they are always fun to watch.  We looked out for it's even rarer cousins too, but it didn't happen that day.

Black-capped Petrel (old photo from N. Carolina)

Beyond the birds, today turned out to be a great day for cetaceans.  First up were a pod of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, a good contrast to a later pod of Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins.  The stars of the day, from a dolphin perspective, though were undoubtedly a large pod of Risso's Dolphins that stayed close to the boat for a long time and gave great views.

Risso's Dolphins

I also got a New York State life cetacean, a species I'd seen several times in North Carolina but nowhere else, when we bumped into a pod of CUVIER'S BEAKED-WHALES.  This species is a true oddity, with their white heads and goose-like 'beaks', they just look ... well, odd.  They are also famous as the deepest diving mammal species in any ocean (deeper then Sperm Whales, or even Elephant Seals).  That diving ability means that views are typically brief as when these guys dive, they are gone for a while, maybe 40 minutes before they surface again.  We were lucky then to get a decent view on the surface before they headed down to the depths.  A very cool species.

Cuvier's Beaked Whales

All too soon however, it was time to start making the long run back to shore with a plan to be back at the dock around 9pm.  They way in is often dull.  The die-hard birders persevere and may add a few things (a hammerhead shark sp. and a sea-turtle sp. in this case) but it's generally pretty birdless.  Being a cynical old birder, and high on dramamine, I usually sleep most of the way back in and that was pretty much the case that day.  When we got close to shore though, the weather started to look a little challenging.  We'd been avoiding thunder storms all through the trip, but as we got back closer to Brooklyn,  it was obvious that we were going to have to pass though one in order to get home.

Ahead of us was a wall of black.  The seas were blue and the skies were clear where we were, but we were going to have to go through some very dark and scary looking waters.  As we got closer everyone made their way down to the cabin and when we hit the edge of the storm, all hell broke loose.  From relatively calm seas the waters turned to ugly boiling churn with waves breaking over the bow and thumping down against the sides of the cabin.  It quite literally went dark, from day to night, and as the captain labored to keep the bow into the waves, our progress slowed to a crawl.  Then things got really ugly, a brush from a water-spout slammed the side of the boat and several of the large (12 foot by 3 foot) plastic windows on the boat cabin exploded out of their frames and crashed into the cabin with wind and waves blasting in behind them.  Scenes from the end of the Titanic movies came to mind, and there was me without my dinner jacket.  We did remain surprisingly calm though and I found myself pressed up against a window with other passengers trying to keep the remaining panels in their frames.  Everyone was soaked and a bit rattled but after a very tense 15 minutes or so, the maelstrom started to subside, the sky slowly lightened, and we passed out of the roaring waters and back to calmer seas.  Phew!  'Cheated Death Once Again' as my old friend Steve Howell is fond of saying on pelagic trips.  Definitely an experience ... but let's not do that again please.

So back at the dock and safely home an hour later.  While the trips can be a bit of a slog, the distances long, and the birding time short, you do get to see really good species.  Every time I get off the boat I think that I won't do another for a while.  Then the email goes out announcing a new trip, and I inevitably sign up ready for a new adventure ... who knows what we might see out there next time.

Puffins, Dovekies, Razorbills and Murres

A Winter Pelagic out of Brooklyn

Until yesterday I had never managed to go out on a Winter Pelagic birding trip in New York State waters.  That's not to say that I hadn't tried to go out - in fact I'd booked on at least four or five boat trips that had been cancelled due to weather - I'd just never actually managed to get out there.  So the omens were good for January 2017, with Paul and Anita Guris organizing a trip on January 7th out of Brooklyn ... which was to course cancelled due to weather (!).  Luckily this time though, the boat captain gave us an alternate date, and despite the threat of another snow storm, at 3am on Friday morning I was driving to Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn in search of a boat and a whole bunch of similarly judgement-challenged birders planning to spend a brisk January day out on the Atlantic Ocean.

The plan quite simply was to motor out fifty miles into deeper water, hopefully arriving in an area frequented by working scallop dredges and other fishing boats by first light.  Then we'd lay a chum slick and 'tow' a bunch of gulls around with us while we looked for other species.  The trail of gulls would make us look like a fishing boat discarding by-catch and hopefully attract other, rarer species to join the gulls.  Well that was the plan anyway ....

Black-legged Kittiwake (2 shots)

By 7:30am, the sun was up, and even though it was cold, gray, and cloudy, there were birds to be seen around the boat.  We did establish a chum slick (diced Menhaden and Beef Suet) and had a bunch of gulls behind the boat all day.  Most were Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls but we did have a single Lesser Black-backed Gull and a lot of Black-legged Kittiwakes stay with us for part of the day.  The gull flock was also supposed to attract Northern Gannets and NORTHERN FULMAR, and both species did show up in very small numbers, but neither species stayed long  The Fulmar was a State Bird for me (#392) and one of my main reasons for coming out on the trip, so I was very happy to see a couple of them even if they didn't put on the kind of show we were hoping for.  The gulls were also supposed to attract Great Skuas, an almost legendary bird in the Western North Atlantic.  Almost every birder on the boat wanted this species, and all but a tiny handful need it for their New York, ABA, or even Life List.  I definitely need it for New York and would love to have seen one, but despite hours or scanning, today was not our day.

While the Skua did not cooperate, the Alcids most definitely did.  As the sun came up we were treated to many fly-by Razorbills and quite a lot of fly-by Dovekies.  Dovekie, a starling sized puffin relative, are really very hard to see from shore.  Experienced sea-watchers in New York might get a couple of distant ones zip by in their scopes in the average year, but for many of the riders on the boat this was a highly desired state/ABA/Life bird.  And we saw lots and lots of them ... I'm guessing perhaps 75 Dovekies, with the captain making an effort to get the boat close to several individuals on the water for photographs.

Nice as Dovekies are, they weren't my target bird.  I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to see Dovekies most years while sea-watching at Montauk, but the same could not be said for ATLANTIC PUFFINS which never come close to shore.  I've waited a long time to see a puffin in New York (a species I've seen only in Maine, Canada, Iceland, and in the UK) and as the day wore on with no sightings I was starting to get stressed that this might not be the day I got them after all.  Then around lunch time, the boat slowed and voices were discussing a bird visible from the bow.  When I heard the words "dusky face" I knew what the bird was and, after a tense few minutes trying to get on the bird, Atlantic Puffin joined my New York State list (#291).

Dovekie (above) and Atlantic Puffin (below)

While birds were the main goal, and it being Winter we weren't expecting much else in terms of vertebrate life out in the cold sea, we did actually see a few non-bird highlights.  Best for me were a pod of BLUEFIN TUNA mixed with a pod of Short-beaked Common Dolphins.  Others apparently saw a whale spout (I missed it) but I did get good views of a couple of Harbor Porpoises ... a species I'm always happy to see.

By 2:30pm, with only a couple of hours of light ahead, it was time to come back in and once again admit defeat in the search for Great Skuas.  On the way in though we had to pass through the 'Murre-Zone' and would add another bird that would be a lifer or state bird for many on the boat.  Common Murres are remarkably loyal to a band of water 23-25 miles offshore in New York in the Winter.  I've seen them before in this zone, and as soon as we motored into the right area, we started to see Common Murres and saw in the end perhaps ten of them.

Common Murre (3 shots)

Darkness overtook us before we reached land, and as we pulled into the dock in Sheepshead Bay, we arrived to several inches of fresh snow that had fallen while we were out at sea.  Not the most fun drive back to Manhattan, but it was a very fun day at sea.  Two state birds (Atlantic Puffin and Northern Fulmar) and four year birds (Lesser Black-backed Gull and Common Murre) made it worthwhile.  I took the opportunity to book myself on two additional Paulagics (June and August) and I guess I'll keep doing the Winter ones and hoping one day for a Skua.  I will get my New York State list to 400 one day (392 currently) and who knows, maybe Great Skua will be that 400th bird.

To the Gulf Stream and Beyond!

A Successful Pelagic Trip out of Brooklyn.

My track record with New York State Pelagic Trips has been mixed, at best.  One of the reasons I have such a terrible State List is all the pelagic birds I've been missing over the past few years, largely for lack of actually getting out on the water.  While I did go on a few trips back in the 90's, they were frankly terrible - trolling endlessly through a brain-numbing birdless dead-zone - but over the past few years things seem to be getting better out there, and so this year I figured I'd give it another shot.

To be honest, I'm not sure that the birds are getting better, rather I think the birders are getting a lot more knowledgable about when and where to go look for seabirds.  Paul Guris of Paulagics (really the only people doing group trips in the mid-Atlantic) in particular has been refining the New York pelagic trips that he offers and seems to be hitting more productive spots at more productive times.  The results have been impressive with several species, not really on offer years ago, now seemingly real possibilities on a group trip.   So this year I decided to give it a go.  I booked on the Winer Pelagic trip, which was cancelled due to weather, leaving me still needing Atlantic Puffin and Northern Fulmar for the State List.  So I tried the June trip, hoping for South Polar Skua, but that was also cancelled due to weather.   Then I rolled over my booking to the August trip ... and this one actually went out!

5am on Monday morning, and instead of crawling out of bed to go to the gym, a sharp poke in the leg from Nathan Goldberg (who'd spent the night sleeping on the metal floor under my comparatively luxurious plastic bench) woke me from a couple of hours of crappy sleep on a fishing boat 125 miles out in the Atlantic.  Time to go!  Hoping for petrels in the chum at dawn and, as the light slowly came up, we started a great morning of pelagic birding off the Hudson Canyon, in a 80-degree eddy of 'Blue Water' - perfect conditions for some gulf-stream specialties, and state birds for me.

I look thoughtful, but I'm actually half asleep and wondering why I'm
 out here (Photo: Sean Sime)

Pre-dawn there ween't any birds to be seen while the crew busily chopped chum and started to lay a slick.  I did see a couple of squid come to the boat lights and some off gelatinous critters, some I thing were shell-less pelagic snails, one I had no idea but didn't really want to get much closer to.  Once the light started to come up though, revealing a flat sea with beautiful blue water and scattered sargassum weed, things started to get interesting.

Fist birds of the day were a couple of Leach's Storm-Petrels (283) bouncing around in the dawn light like crazy ocean nighthawks.  They were closely followed by some Audubon's Shearwaters (284), Cory's Shearwater (285), and a couple of Great Shearwaters (286).  Not a bad start to the day!
Next up came some BAND-RUMPED STORM-PETRELS (287) a NYS State bird (#388) for me and a few Wilson's Storm-Petrels (288).  And then a presumed Great Shearwater seemed odd and invited  a second look ... BLACK-CAPPED PETREL! (289) and another NYS State Bird (#389).  With the Band-rumps and more Black-caps, you could have been forgiven for thinking we were in North Carolina not New York, but I didn't really care because I'd just racked up 7 year birds and 2 State birds in a couple of hours.  Good times .....

Band-rumped Storm-Petrel and Black-capped Petrel
Both State Birds for me.

While the birding was pretty awesome, we also had some visits from groups of dolphins (I don't care how experienced a birder you are, dolphins in the bow wake makes a giggling kid out of even the most jaundiced old hand).  First up a couple of groups of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, then a big pod of smallish dolphins that didn't easily fit an ID.  At first I thought they were going to be Short-beaked Common-Dolphins, then maybe one of the more pelagic species, but when we got closer we realized that these were STRIPED DOLPHINS ... a life mammal for me (and I'm guessing for most others on the boat as they were only the second sighting ever for Paul Guris!)

Striped Dolphin ... a life mammal!

With everything going so well, the next episode was a bit of a turn around that soured the mood of most of the participants on the boat, at least for a while.  A few of us got glimpse of a small gray petrel low to the water, and Tim Lenz, looking at photos of an Audubon's Shearwater, noticed another bird photobombing his shot ... a WHITE-FACED STORM-PETREL.  There was lots of chatter and everyone was rushing to the other end of the boat, so I assumed that people were on the bird, but apparently not, and long story short ... only 3 or 4 people got views of the bird, and 50+ people were very unhappy.  Awkward ....

White-faced Storm-Petrel was a major target for the day, seen in New York only a handful of times ever (and indeed almost never seen in the Western North Atlantic away from a single Massachusetts pelagic trip that has been 'the place' to see this species historically).  Recently, there had been a few sightings in New York waters, and this trip was largely designed to have a chance at this rare (ABA Code 4) species.  The fact that some had seen one, and in the confusion not called it out, made some people very unhappy and much grumbling ensued.  Things soon blew over though and everyone got back to looking for seabirds.

So having been guilty of not shouting out (what was at best a 'maybe' sighting of) the bird, I set myself to make amends and scanned intensely for another one.  About an hour later I saw a small gray bird heading towards the boat, got bins on it, then proceeded to yell like a mad man ....

"White-faced Storm!  Twelve O'Clock ...
White-faced Storm!  One O'Clock ...
White-faced Storm!"

And people sort of got the point (it's hard to ignore a large Welshman bellowing at the top of his lungs), and the captain was able to keep us close to the bird for a good ten minutes so everyone got amazing looks at what I'm sure was a lifer for many (followed by a second bonus bird for good measure).   WHITE-FACED STORM-PETREL (290) and NYS State Bird (#390).

Two different White-faced Storm-Petrels.

So what do you do to top three White-faced Storm-Petrels?  Well apart from an Albatross, there really isn't much you can do, and besides with a seven hour run back to the dock ahead of us, it was time to head to shore.

Short-finned Pilot-Whales (guessing short-finned based on water temp)

So back to Brooklyn we went, and I took the opportunity to get a long nap after a largely sleepless night.  From time to time I'd wake to a scramble where someone outside had called a bird out (causing nappers from the cabin to run outside, usually too late to see anything) but the ride in was not terribly eventful bird-wise.  There were however lots of other critters, most notably over 300 SHORT-FINNED PILOT-WHALES in scattered groups, but all basically lounging that surface.  Then there were some other 'non-avian' highlights ... a large Hammerhead Shark sp., a Loggerhead Sea-Turtle, a breaching ray, a breaching Basking Shark, flying fish, etc.  So much life out on the ocean ...

Great Shearwater.

And so all too soon the adventure was over.  But everyone was thrilled with the day, and I can't wait to get out there again.  New York is redeemed in my mind, no longer pelagic bird-dessert, this had been a really high quality pelagic trip.

Special thanks to Paul and Anita Guris for organizing, and for the various spotters for helping get people on birds.  Now if only I can actually get some calm weather to finally get the damned Atlantic Puffins on the New York State List !

Suckers and Fish Listing

Some interesting blog posts and a shout out for a conservation issue ....

Going a little off the bird topic and on to my other favorite group of vertebrates, fish.  I am a fisherman, mostly a fly-fisherman, although I grew up in the UK fishing all three disciplines.  We went GAME FISHING for Salmon and Trout with fly-rods (and sometimes spin tackle), sat for endless hours COURSE FISHING for carp and pike, and spent many cold Winter days SEA FISHING either by surf-casting or by fishing from piers.  Fishing was very much a core of my childhood outdoor life and, while it was ultimately surpassed by birding in terms of time and attention, I still occasionally pick up a fly-rod and have cast them into waters as far flung as Alaska, Quebec, Argentina and Japan over the years.  I am also completely fascinated by the diversity of fish, which in may ways is the same fascination I have for the diversity of birds.  Fish are just harder to go and watch.

Smallmouth Buffalo - Photo by Ben Cantrell - the image that started me off
on a fish theme this morning.

Laying in bed this morning and skimming Facebook I came across a great article by Matt Miller on Suckers over at The Nature Conservancy Blog.  A cruelly misunderstood and unfairly maligned group on native fish, that I've seen but never caught, led me to an interesting couple of hours of immersion in a whole other sphere on natural history.   I figured I'd share some of what I learned, and also give a shout out to some of the folks doing great conservation work in this area (on the theory that any publicity for a good cause helps)

Ben Cantrell - a leader in the Rough Fishing movement

Suckers it would seem are a very oppressed group on native fish, often killed on site by anglers who wrongfully think that they are invasive, and damaging to fisheries.  In a world where trout and bass rule US fishing (and dominate what has become a very commercial sport), these natives are unfairly seen as 'competition' for the 'more desirable species' and persecuted to the point that species are struggling to survive.

This article led me to a whole other world of folks who actively fish for these species, a world called Rough Fishing (cousin of the UK's Course Fishing?) and to some fascinating stories from that sub-culture.

One of the best blogs I found was Ben Cantrell's Fish Species Blog which details adventures with fish that aren't all Bass and Trout.  One of the best articles, and a revelation to me, was a post on "Microfishing" where folks go out and pursue species usually considered too small to have any sporting interest.  The name of the game isn't a macho battle against a giant fish but rather a celebration of the diversity of fish species.  Now they really had my attention, as for years I'd keep a list of species of fish I'd caught with a fly-rod but had always been too self conscious to go deliberately target tiny fish just to add to my list.  But other people do!

Redband Darter: Photo by Ben Cantrell (hoping he doesn't mind the shout out)

These Rough Fishermen, are having fun, actively engaged in conservation, raising awareness, and keeping lists.  It's really like birding with rod and line and of course, where there are lists, there are people who take it to the next level and get seriously competitive.  Just like in birding someone is going to take that competition to the extreme, which in this case is a guy called Steve Wozniak who writes a blog called 1000Fish detailing his attempt to catch 1,000 species f fish on rod-and line.

Steve Wozniak (and friend) with a Silver Buffalo

(Spoiler Alert: it took him 10+ years and 60+ countries but he did catch 1,000 species, and is now over 1,200 - the Tom Gullick of the fishing world).

After reading about his exploits for hours I was itching to go and catch fish and to re-start my fishing life list (would eBird include fish do you think?).  I also had an urge to share - fish conservation is unglamorous and all the money and attention gets sucked up by the 'sport' fish leaving a lot of great native species struggling for attention.  Read some of the blogs.  There are good people doing important work out there.