tweeters, I spent the last 10 days of april long lining for sablefish off
the coast of washington from grays canyon to cape flattery. We dress the
fish at sea throwing over heads and guts and always have lots of sea birds
around the boat. Every now and then we get the odd passerine , tweety
birds, landing on the vessel. The sea birds I saw this year were fairly
normal.
Lots of rhinoceros auklets, bonaparte's gulls , and common murres
between bellingham and cape flattery. Once outside in the ocean we usually
travel and fish 15 to 25 miles off shore. Running the boat at night with
our bright sodium lights seem to attract and confuse the birds especially
this time of year and one night i saw a dozen or so song birds of various
sizes flitting through the light. The previous day a junco landed
aboard, a few years ago a townsend's warbler, so every year we see a stray
song bird. This year was the first I'd seen so many at night . I was
wondering if passerines migrate that far of shore ?The winds had been fair
NW 15-25 knots, no big storms. The morning after seeing the song bird
flock a female cowbird landed on board ,stayed 4 days, rain and shine,
hopping about the hatch where we cut fish and eating the bits of fish meat
or gut that she carefully selected, pretty much unafraid of us trudging
through our daily routine. I chucked a hand full of fennel seeds on the
hatch next to the flesh but she preferred the meat . "Cowgirl" left one
morning when the wind picked up to a stiff SW 30. During that 4 days a a
white crowned sparrow dropped in and battled a large sand flea hoping for
an easy meal. It gave up after a couple hours and flew off onto other sea
adventures.
offshore birds
Pacific loon= many between westport and grays canyon
Red phalarope =large flocks
sabine's gull-8
western gulls
mew gull
black legged kittiwake-5
tufted puffin -1
brant - passing flocks
fork tailed storm-50+ around boat
pink footed shearwater-6
sooty shearwater- many
northern fulmar-12
cassin's auklet-5
laysan albatross-1

short tailed albatross-1 juvenile as close as 6 ft off our stern kind of
uncommon usually they hang
on the fringes being a bit more timid and less aggressive than the
black-footed .this bird and the
laysan Isaw one day 40 mile north of grays canyon. 47 12.10 N 124
57.59 W

black footed albatross-200+ one actually landed on top of our bait shed
nearly scaring the grundens off the gov. observer. He easily helped it
back into flight before it got boat sick all
over. We've never had a gooney land on board very odd.......5 mins later
it started to snow.

short list lots of sea stories
good birding
Ken Lane
acme wa
carylane at nas.com