Pelagic Photos

On Saturday, I went on the BBC’s deep water pelagic. A bit on the slow side on the whole, no exciting birds and very few cetaceans. Fortunately the sharks made up for it.

Some photos:

Storm-Petrels

Leach’s and Wilson’s Storm-Petrels

Wilson's

Wilson’s

Shearwaters

Shearwaters (mostly real)

Basking Shark

Basking Shark

Whale Shark!

Whale Shark!

Whale Shark

Whale Shark!

Check out Scott Spangenberg’s video!

Tiger Shark

Tiger Shark

Long-tail

Long-tail

Long-tailed Jaeger

Moon

Moon over the harbor. Apparently didn’t pick up the clouds around it.

Extreme Pelagic 2010

Not going to write up a full report (will link to the BBC page when it’s online) but the overnight pelagic was quite spectacular. One of the first birds was a Great Skua and things got better from there. By midmorning of the second day, the following announcement was made: “To put things in perspective, the one day high count for White-faced Storm-Petrels in North America was 5. Set yesterday. We’re approaching 15.”

Only complaint was that I spent the first day on the upper deck and had a brutal time getting things in focus. That and I never got a good feel for the Band-rumped Storm-Petrels, only picking out 1 or 2 out of the 5. Missing some of the better landbirds (Red-headed Woodpecker and Purple Finch) wasn’t great but they were distant and only identified through photographs later.

So, some photos:

Skua!

Skua!

The skua

Long-tail

Long-tailed Jaeger (didn’t realize I had this shot until I got home), thought I only had the adjacent Parasitic.

Parasitic

The adjacent Parasitic

Two Mantas

Manta Rays

White-faced #3

White-faced #3

Only a couple White-faced Storm-Petrel shots, up to 8 different birds are in the flickr set (along with more skuas and some phalaropes and other stuff with more common stuff to be added later).

Four life birds (Skua, storm-petrels, and Parasitic Jaeger (yes I got both skuas before I got a Parasitic)) plus state Long-tailed Jaeger.

Already can’t wait for next year!