Syke Haas reports "from the waves" off the West Coast of the US:
In April, WINGS BIRDING TOURS boarded the cruise ship Discovery in the Port of L.A. for a short but sweet voyage up the Pacific to Vancouver, BC. With two full and one half day at sea, we spent most of our time just off the continental shelf looking for rare seabirds, of which we found plenty of. A handful of Cook’s Petrels were observed off San Luis Obispo, while we were lucky enough to have 8 Hawaiian Petrels and 4 Laysan Albatrosses from mid-California up into southern Oregon. But the real stars of the show were the large numbers of Murphy’s Petrels we encountered with a total of 139 combined on our two full days at sea! Lots of other great seabirds though including Fork-tailed and Leach’s Storm-Petrels, Sooty, Short-tailed, Pink-footed and Black-vented Shearwaters, lots of Black-footed Albatrosses, all three Jaegers and flocks of migrating of Red-necked and Red Phalaropes as well as Sabine’s Gulls.
This ebird trip report will have the tour’s totals from this year. https://ebird.org/tripreport/51495
We’ll be running this highly popular tour again next spring aboard the cruise ship Eurodam beginning on April 24th, 2023. Click here to sign up for the tour! https://wingsbirds.com/tours/pacific-coast-seabird-cruises-from-southern-california-to-vancouver/
Hawaiian Petrel
Murphy's Petrel
Murphy's Petrel
Laysan Albatross
Black-footed Albatross
Dall's Porpoise