Subject: Black-vented Shearwater: a cautionary tale
Date: Nov 1 18:21:08 1997
From: Mike Patterson - mpatters at orednet.org




Black-vented Shearwater: a cautionary tale

The Lower Columbia Birders Association went out on its monthly
outing today. We went down to Ecola State Park looking for action
and danger among the seabirds. There were, among other things,
about 500 PACIFIC LOONS in a large unruly raft. But off of Bird
Point, there was a huge flock of what looked to be CALIFORNIA
GULLS and BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKES feeding on something.

Into this flock of gulls came two dark-backed, white-bellied
birds gliding like shearwaters, one following the other. They
kept up this glide parallel to the curl of the breakers, banking
and tipping, giving me good looks at the upper body and fair
looks at the lower body. They finally landed on the water.

Bird Point is the northern most point that can be seen from the
observation deck at Ecola Point, about 1.5 miles away. Through my
spotting scope I could easily make out kittiwakes and California
Gulls and these two things. They flew like shearwaters. They were
solid dark brown on the upper tail, wings, back and head.
The dark on the head cleanly broke at gape/auricular to white
below. The under wings were pale gray; the belly, white. I did
not get a reasonable view of the vent/undertail.

I quickly sketched what I saw and showed it around to the other
observers. Andrew Emlen was inclined to go with Pink-footed
Shearwater, from the sketch. I insisted that it didn't seem
big enough to be a pink-foot. I was going to go for Black-vented.
So I set to watching the spot where I'd seen these two birds and
Pacific Loon came gliding along parallel to the breakers and then
another, this one with its head not so outstretched and its feet
pulled up for air breaking.

By the 15th Pacific Loon doing a shearwater stall and glide, I
had abandoned the shearwater hypothesis. Had there not been so
many cavorting Pacific Loons to provide me adequate time to cool
out you may well have been reading an RBA on Black-vented
Shearwater right now.

El Nino does strange things...


--
********************************* I am but mad north-north-west;
* Mike Patterson, Astoria, OR * when the wind is southerly,
* mpatters at orednet.org * I know a hawk from a handsaw.
http://www.pacifier.com/~mpatters -ws