Hey tweets! Happy Monday.

Well last week I spent 4 days offshore 40-50 miles out from Neah Bay on
longliner looking for halibut. Also another one of my valiant attempts to
identify pelagic birds. The weather was marginal for fishing but wonderful
for birding. On the Washington side of the line there was a large flock of
Sabine's Gulls flying north. Approximately 50 birds in quite a tight flock,
really beautiful. Northern Fulmars were abundant from about 20 miles to 50
miles out (170-250 birds). The Black-footed Albatross showed up at 30 miles
out and then were pretty common. I saw about 50 on the one day we spent in
US waters. Sooty Shearwaters were in with the Fulmars when we were hauling
gear. Probably about 25 to 1 Fulmars to Sooty Shearwaters. I saw 2
Pink-footed Shearwaters and they were for the first time very easy to
identify; lovely pink feet and pale bill with the white underparts. There
were 150-200 Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels with some in resting flocks. I had
never seen them resting on the water before. There were lots of
Glaucous-winged Gulls (50-100) in crisp breeding plumage and what I think
were 6 Herring Gulls (large, pink feet, black wing tips). We never got too
close to these gulls but their mantles didn't look dark enough for Western
Gulls. On an oceanographical (is that an adjective) note the colour of
the water changed at 25 miles from a pea soup green to a very tropical
aquamarine.

We also were inspected by a single Fur Seal circling the boat, very curious
guys.

Tatoosh Island to Neah Bay : Tufted Puffins in small numbers (2) and
hundreds of Rhinoceros Auklets (200-250) . Common Murres were about in
smaller groups. I probably saw 100 all together. Pigeon Gullemots were
nesting under the docks of the fish plants and combined with the 6 or so
Sealions it didn't make for a very restful sleep.

On June 7 we went over the US/Canadian line(60 miles off Tattoosh) and saw
similar birds but it was very calm and there were not as many large flocks.
Only about 5 Sabine's Gulls flew by, 20 or so Black-footed Albatross, 150
Northern Fulmars, 10 Sooty Shearwaters, 1 Tufted Puffin, 2 Pink-footed
Shearwaters, and 30 Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels. One shearwater I need help
on though. I only had the NGS guide and the closest I could get was a
Streaked Shearwater. I was the same relative size as a Pink-footed. It had
pink feet, a light pink (fleshy colour) bill with no black tip and the
throat and head were streaked and not very dark. The weirder feature that
didn't show in my guide was the pale white bar running down the middle of
the wings, separating the primary from the secondary wing coverts. It
wasn't mottled like a young Pink-footed but otherwise dark on its back. Any
guesses? So sorry no photograph I was at the time rather slimed up (not a
pretty sight).

Tracee
tracee at iphc.washington.edu