10/05/2023
Check out our trip report from our Monterey Seabirds trip on 10/1/23! We have trips on October 8th, 15th, and 22nd! Head to www.gowhales.com to reserve your spot!
We had a fantastic Monterey Seabirds trip on Sunday, 10/1/23! We left the Monterey harbor for another pelagic adventure with beautiful lighting, and a Peregrine Falcon wished us luck as we left for the bay. We had Heerman’s Gulls, Black Turnstones, and a couple Black Oystercatchers as we made our way out. Further from the coast, we spent time with many Common Murres, Rhinoceros Auklets, and Sooty and Pink-footed Shearwaters on our way to deeper waters. When we reached the Monterey submarine canyon, we found a Black-vented Shearwater, as well as Ashy and Black Storm-petrels. On our search we even found a blue whale! As we made our way between groups of shearwaters, we found quite a few Buller’s Shearwaters and a highlight, a Flesh-footed Shearwater! We got great passes and many opportunities for great photos as they rode the swells. As we made our way northwest along the canyon’s deepest trenches, we found a large group of over a thousand mostly long-beaked and plenty of short-beaked common dolphins, notable among cetacean-enthusiasts as the two often inhabit much different environments (coastal vs more oceanic). We visited the Soquel Canyon and parts of Santa Cruz county and soon found a rather large raft of mixed storm-petrels, consisting of mostly Black Storm-petrels with many Ashy Storm-petrels, one Wilson’s Storm Petrel! and a yet-to-be-confirmed leucistic Ashy Storm-petrel! We also had several Black-footed Albatross, Northern Fulmar (including a white morph), and we even had time to hang out with an surface-active humpback whale. We had a lovely ride back to the harbor with following seas spent with a great and enthusiastic group of birders. Immense thanks to our hard-working bird leaders Mark Kudrav, Beth and Tom Hamel, Bernardo Alps, and Stephen Rovell, plus our deckhand/naturalist Dane McDermott! It’s never a bad time to get out and look for birds, but now is a particularly exciting time to come out and explore!
