Hi Tweets,

At about 4 PM this Labor Day afternoon, a Puffinus-type shearwater passed
the tip of the Iona South Jetty, flying S ---> N at an approximate distance
of 0.5--0.75 km. offshore. Because glare from the low sun through breaks in
the cloud-deck reduced the bird to a silhouette, no plumage features were
visible; however, size, shape and flight-style were distinctive.

While the small Sterna-genus terns, gulls and a few jaegers were in dynamic
soaring in the gale-force Northwesterlies blowing at the time, only the
shearwater flew with no wingbeats in typically long glides on rigid narrow
wings alternating with graceful high arcs up to ~10 meters above the water;
on most of its glides it would disappear intermittently into wave troughs or
be visible just skating across a wave's surface, becoming visible as it
began its next arc.

This is the second-only sighting of a shearwater at Iona, and shearwater
sightings from land are extremely rare in the Greater Vancouver Checklist
Area and Georgia Strait generally, usually in the September-October period,
and often when there is fog offshore and birds find themselves 'trapped' in
the protected waters of the Inside Passage.

Though any discussion of its identity is necessarily speculative, it was
overwhelmingly most likely on shape, size and flight-style to have been a
Sooty Shearwater Puffinus griseus, common to greatly abundant offshore at
this time, and barely likely to have been a Short-tailed Shearwater P.
tenuirostris, another common Southern Hemisphere species which typically
enters offshore BC waters a little later in the year.

Weather conditions at the time were influenced by a large, fairly deep Low
arriving onshore a few days ago then stalling just to the NW of Vancouver
Island. As the High impeding its soutward progress for the last few days
began to decay today the Low resumed its southward march, and its first
cloud-decks of its southeastern quadrant had just begun to move over
Vancouver this afternoon. Brisk northwesterlies began blowing about mid-day,
tailing off in mid-afternoon, then strengthening to gale-force in the later
afternoon, when the bird flew by the jetty. Sea state at the time was a
heavy northwesterly two- to three-meter chop with many large whitecaps on a
flood tide.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)