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.

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 !

There be sharks!

If you don't know Ocean Search then you should really check it out.

So the movie Jaws introduced us to the idea that Great White Sharks live on the US East Coast but the fishermen and other nature folks have now this for generations.  Unfortunately the history of sharks on the East Coast is more than a little bit one sided ... we killed them ... and continue to kill them ... in large numbers.  Montauk in particular was, and is, a center of shark slaughter ... sickening photos of sad little men standing next to dead sharks are still on display every week, even today.  But there is a bit of a bright spot ... the folks at Oceansearch have been tagging and tracking sharks on the East Coast and have started the long, slow, process of changing their image from Man-Killers to the amazing complex creatures that they are.

Recently the New York Post (our local Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid) ran a story about about the shark above ... transformed of course into a 'man-eater' headed to New York (Everybody panic!  Think of the children!).  The reality of course is that Great Whites are part of New York's ecosystem and have always been just off-shore (conspicuously not eating surfers and bathers for hundreds of years as it turns out).  Maybe if we get to know them a little better we can start turning the PR around.  Check out the Oceansearch Website ... we really need to help these incredible creatures with their image and build the number of people demanding better protection for shark species.

Mary Lee (she shark above) moves along the coast from Florida to Massachusetts

I also saw a great story today featuring a Tiger Shark ... a BIG Tiger Shark.  I sort-of conceptually know that they are 'out there' off the East Coast but have never seen one.

This was a pretty big Tiger Shark captured and (mercifully) tagged off the Carolinas recently (See story here).  No doubt we'll see this tagged shark cruise the beaches of the East Coast over the coming months and again, not eating our children.

The website also has links to tagged Mako and Blue Sharks.  Makos in particular being over-fished by "sport" fishermen (why does killing a shark seem to be a substitute for manhood for some sad people?).

So check it out.  The more people are aware, the better the chances of conserving out apex marine predators.  Sharks in general could use a lot of PR help and this may be a start.

Another new Atlantic Shearwater to worry about?

Once upon a time there were just 5 species of Shearwater we had to worry about in the North Atlantic (Great, Cory's, Sooty, Manx, Audubon's) and life was good.  Then along came some splitters and pointed out that the situation was probably a tad more complex than we had thought, leading to Yelkouan Shearwater and Balearic Shearwater.  More recently, we got to start fretting about Cape Verde Shearwater, and the one I missed this Spring off Long Island (while I was in the Adirondacks, feeding the mosquitos and not seeing Spruce Grouse) still rankles a bit.  Now, it looks as though Scopoli's Shearwater (the Mediterranean breeding populations of Cory's Shearwater) is set to become a species too.  So, in short, no more off-the-cuff Cory's Shearwater IDs and each bird now has to be studied to tease apart these sister species.

Went out on the CRESLI (Coastal Research and Conservation Society of Long Island) Whale-watching trip on the Viking Fleet yesterday.  A number of New York birders including Corey Finger, Richard Fried and Shaibal Mitra initially planned to go, but they dropped out one-by-one leaving just me, Jacob Drucker and Lila Fried boarding the boat at 9:30am.  I rarely go out with this crew because they are primarily focussed on Whales and Dolphins, stray often into Rhode Island waters, and don't tend to go very far offshore.  Having said that, it is a cheap way to get out on the water and for only $75, you are at least out there 10-30 miles South of Long Island, and who knows what might show up.

As it happens, there wasn't that much to see bird-wise, or whale-wise for that matter, but we did eventually bump into a pod of about 60 Short-beaked Common Dolphins which made the Whale-watching part of the trip a big success for the, mostly French, tourists on board.   A Kemp's Ridley-Turtle was also notable, albeit seen briefly, as were a couple of breaching Basking Sharks.

Short-beaked common Dolphin (2 shots)

Back to the birds and we worked pretty hard all day, picking up a single Parasitic Jaeger, 95 Wilson's Storm-Petrels, 15 Great Shearwaters and about 20 "Cory's Shearwaters".  Within the Cory's, some were indeterminate, most were the borealis ssp. but one bird looked pretty good for a SCOPOLI'S SHEARWATER, showing lots of white on the primaries.  I don't think it's a slam-dunk, the white is not as crisp as some of the illustrations/pictures I've seen, but it was at least intriguingly different and we reported it as a "possible" Scopoli's, putting photos out there for comment.

'borealis' Cory's Shearwater - note all dark primaries.

Possible Scopoli's Shearwater (2 shots) - note pale bases to primaries.

Scopoli's is supposed to also be smaller, lighter in build, and paler than Cory's and while it did seem to be a lightly-built bird, paleness is really difficult to discern when so many of the Cory's were in molt and looking pretty scruffy.  Still, an interesting bird, and no doubt one that we'll all be getting used to (expert at) differentiating if indeed it does get split.

Update:  as of September 2012, the BOU has split this species.  Who knows whether the AOU (or Clements, which matters more for World Listers) will follow suit.

First Summer Pelagic

Met up with Capt. Max Kramer and left Montauk at 5am, with no clear expectations, to see what we could find.   We started out about 20 miles South of Quogue and drifted / slowly cruised South and East for most of the day, ending up about 35 miles South East of Montauk.  We made many stops and chummed pretty solidly throughout the day resulting in a constant stream of birds visiting the boat.

Great Shearwaters seem very confident around boats and stayed with us all day, as did the Wilson's Storm-Petrels.  I estimated that we saw 200 Greats and 60 Wilson's during the day.  Despite watching the Storm-Petrels all day I wasn't able to pick any other species out though, and we'll perhaps have to go out further to find them.

Great Shearwater

We also had 6 Cory's Shearwaters, 2 Sooty Shearwaters and a single Manx Shearwater.

Corey's Shearwater

Manx Shearwater

Perhaps the most exciting thing though was the almost constant presence of Jaegers, starting with the beautiful Pomarine Jaeger that found us as soon as we started chumming.

Pomarine Jaeger

We also got to spend a lot of time with "Jaeger sp." pondering the ID of a number of birds in different plumages.  This one in the end, I settled on as Long-tailed Jaeger despite the very Parasitic Jaeger looking tail extensions.

Long-tailed Jaeger

Amongst the "non-birds" the clear highlight was a 15-foot Basking Shark but we also saw Blue Sharks, Bluefish and feeding Bluefin Tuna.

Basking Shark

In year-bird terms (the point after-all), I added 5 species to bring the total to 319.  A very promising start to the season and nice to be able to get out and find my own birds at sea.