Repositioning Cruise

Pelagic birds are ocean-dwelling birds that are rarely seen from land. These birds are not well known by most land-dwelling birders, me included. They are probably the group of species least understood by ornithologists. In fact, more and more species within this group are being recognized by taxonomists. This is due to their preference for marine regions, their tendency to nest on remote islands and their cryptic plumages. Few are brightly marked, such as the three species of Puffin. Most are drably plumaged, making identification challenging. This is especially true for the Shearwaters, Petrels and Storm-Petrels and many of the Alcids as well. 

There are roughly 30 species of pelagic species that I will need to find this year. I saw some of these from the La Jolla Sea Watch in January (Black-vented Shearwater) and the Point Pinos Sea Watch near Monterey in March (Black-legged Kittiwake, Common Murre and Pigeon Guillemot). Some I saw from the boat ride across the Santa Cruz Channel on March 13 (Ancient Murrelet, Rhinoceros Auklet). I observed Northern Gannet during a storm at First Encounter Beach on Cape Cod in March. Thick-billed Murre turned up in March at Boston Harbor. Many more pelagic species await detection during my Biggest Year. 

Of course I will try to add these species whenever the opportunity arises. One such opportunity was the repositioning cruise from San Diego to Vancouver on board Holland America’s Eurodam cruise ship, April 24-27. My birding buddy EJ Raynor had recommended this cruise for birding last fall. Then in January I discovered that several other Big Year birders were planning to take this cruise. So I was in. 

 I arrived in San Diego during the evening of Sunday, April 23, with my wife, Elena Maribel. I had invited her to join me on the cruise to celebrate her birthday. We checked into the Wyndham Bayside Hotel across from the cruise terminal. I opened up the Birds Eye app to see what local species may be around in San Diego County that I still needed for my ABA Area Year list. Birds Eye accesses my eBird account to determine needs and target species. Three species popped up in San Diego County: Little Stint, Vaux’s Swift and Pacific-Slope Flycatcher. I had tried for the overwintering Little Stint twice in January at the south end of San Diego Bay. It would be migrating any day now but it had not been reliable to chase. The swift and flycatcher were spring migrants reported to eBird a few days earlier less than a mile away at Balboa Park in downtown San Diego. Our cruise boarding time was 10:20 AM and Maribel had made plans for us to have breakfast at 8:45 AM with a teaching colleague from Colorado State University that we had not seen in 20 years. So time was limited in the morning. And I didn’t have wheels. So I decided to go for the Balboa Park birds. 

I was slow getting up on Monday morning. I didn’t get out the door until 8 AM. Heading towards Balboa Park on foot I noticed a nice park adjacent to the hotel: Waterfront Park. It was birdy so I decided to focus my effort there instead. In an hour I racked up 22 species including four species of warbler (Black-throated Gray, Orange-crowned, Yellow, and Yellow-rumped Warblers), several Hooded Oriole and two flycatchers (Cassin’s Kingbird and Ash-throated Flycatcher). A third species of flycatcher flew before I could definitively identify it as Pacific-slope Flycatcher. I joined the breakfast at 9:15 AM. 

After checking in at the cruise terminal and settling into our suite on board the Eurodam, I realized that we had several hours to kill before the boat would sail. So I convinced Maribel to join me on a visit to Balboa Park. We left the ship and ubered to the park at 1:30 PM and spent a leisurely 90 minutes among the dozens of homeless vagabonds that inhabited the park. This decision paid off as several Pacific-slope Flycatchers (#548) were calling. I loaded audio of the call onto my eBird checklist here: https://ebird.org/checklist/S135241247. 

The cruise departed the port as scheduled at 4 PM, April 24, 2023. I set up my telescope on the third floor deck with David and Tammy McQuade from Florida. There were about 50 birders in several groups scattered around the ship. Once we left the harbor we began seeing pelagic species. A few Black-vented Shearwater skimmed the waves. A triad of Pomarine Jaeger (549) powered past the ship. Pairs of tiny murrelets began appearing. One pair popped up close enough for us to see white underwings and the face pattern typical of the Scripp’s Murrelet (550) in our photographs. Craveri’s and Guadalupe Murrelets were undoubtedly present in these warm waters as well but I could not find them. 

As we passed by some distant Mexican islands to our south, the avifauna changed. Groups of Cassin’s Auklet (551) streamed by with smaller numbers of Rhinocerous Auklet. A few Brown Booby (552) flew by, and Sooty Shearwater (553) was numerous. There was a smaller number of the large and slow flapping Pink-footed Shearwater (554). An enormous flock of Black Storm-petrel (555) appeared out of nowhere. Several groups of migrating Sabine’s Gull and Red-necked Phalarope (556) flew by. 

The ship sailed to about 70 miles off-shore and then turned to parralel the shore lumbering northward at a steady pace of about 22 MPH. We awoke the next morning, April 25, 2024, somewhere off the coast of Northern California. Here we saw even more Sooty Shearwater. Sprinkled among them were two species of albatross and three species of Pterodroma petrels but these rarer species were invisible to my untrained eyes. Pelagic birding is an acquired skill, and even more difficult when the boat won’t stop to study birds close by. Oceanic birds are the group I know the least, probably because of my fear of seasickness which kept me away from pelagic birding for over 3 decades. 

Late in the afternoon I watched a messy brown stiff-winged bird and mistakenly called out Pink-footed Shearwater, which would not be expected at the latitude we had reached. Dave McQuade looked at my photo and informed me I had a dark-morph Fulmar (557). I would see several more as well as a couple light-morph Fulmar. It was not until the last hour of daylight that I finally saw and photographed a Murphy’s Petrel (558) and a Black-footed Albatross (559). 

The morning of April 26, 2023, I practiced spotting birds from my 8th floor balcony before joining the birder throng. We were presumably off the coast of Oregon now. A small dark stiff-winged bird appeared straight out from where I was standing. It sped away from the ship without flapping but rather using its wings as sails, arcing up and down over the 10-foot swells. As it disappeared I noticed white flashes underneath the wings indicating that I had my first Hawaiian Petrel (560) somewhere off the Oregon Coast. No documentation however. Not even a witness. Maybe I will see more from a pelagic boat trip I have planned for Hawaii in mid-October. Joining the other birders, I discovered that pelagic bird experts on board had estimated over 250 Murphy’s Petrel, possible a new USA record for this species that wanders the Pacific Ocean when it is not breeding in New Zealand. Dave McQuade pointed out a sprightly Fork-failed Storm-Petrel (561) skimming away from the ship. Not sure I could identify it from that view. However, later on Matt Jensen, a young birder from MInnesota, yelled out he had another one heading north with the boat and not too far out. He followed it through his scope for several minutes and then announced that it appeared to cross the bow from port to starboard. I ran forward  along the deck and turned left near the bow to check for it on the port side of the ship. When I could find no birds at all, I postulated that it might still be paralleling the boat on the starboard side near the bow. So I returned to the most forward position possible on the starboard side of the bow but 100 yards forward from where Matt had spotted it through his telescope. Looking closer to the boat than usual I respotted it and found that it was indeed following along with the  boat at about 20 MPH. I watched it flicker among the waves as I stood there by myself peering intently at the waves through my camera for about 20 minutes, trying desperately to get an identifiable  photo for documentation. I finally nailed down a photograph and walked back to the birder throng at midship. David Winkler (a retired ornithologist at Cornell University) was there and I knew that Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel was his most wanted bird on the trip. He rushed back with me to the spot along with Christine and Jim McMillan. We stared for 10 minutes at the spot where I had seen it. Chris respotted it and I got another good view of this lifer for me. Dave unfortunately never picked it up. Pelagic birding can be that way.  

The third morning of the cruise, April 27, 2023, we awoke to dense fog in the Juan de Fuca Straight which divides Vancouver Island in Canada from the Olympic Peninsula in the USA. Once the fog had lifted, ocean birds were gone from the calm waters. A few migrant land birds buzzed the ship including an unidentified hummingbird (probably Rufous Hummingbird) and a pair of American Pipit. As we approached the port of Victoria, the ship entered Canadian waters and my opportunity for USA year birds came to an end. 

I added 14 new species from the cruise ship to my Biggest Year total. Because of my inexperience with pelagics, I missed out on adding more than a half dozen species seen by other observers from the cruise. Species missed were Parasitic and Long-tailed Jaegers, Craveri’s Murrelet, Ashy and Leach’s Storm-Petrels, Cook’s Petrel, and Laysan Albatross. To be a successful Big Year birder, I will need to spend many more days at sea in 2023.