[CINC] Thursday CX

[Bernardo Alps]

Hi all.

I went out on the  Thursday, December 27, Condor Express trip. Captain Mat was not very happy that he had no naturalists. Matt was on deck and Captain Dave in the galley. 

Mat gave his "it's going to be rough" talk but all 45 passengers came aboard. We turned west out of the harbor but immediately turned east after word came from a crew boat of a sighting of two humpbacks by the "H" platforms earlier in the day. 

We found two large feeding aggregations just south and a couple of miles southeast of Platform Henry.  There were huge numbers of birds, mainly Brandt's Cormorants and Common Murres, but no humpbacks. There were three Minke Whales in one of the groups feeding actively with visible blows. We didn't stick around long because Mat wanted to find the humpbacks so we continued east. We went as far as offshore of the Ventura Fairgrounds and then turned towards shore before going back uphill. Unfortunately, the wind and swell picked up during our trip and the return was pretty rough.

Not only did we not find the humpbacks, but we never ran into any gray whales and didn't see a single dolphin all day.

There were high numbers of birds, although species diversity was low. The most remarkable was the fact that we saw over 1000 Common Murres. A single sighting of this species would have been news just a few years ago, now their numbers continue to increase exponentially. There were not as many Black-vented Shearwaters around as on recent trips.

The complete list of birds seen on the trip is below; the harbor list is from a walk I took after the trip.

Take care,

Bernardo



Pelagic - East Santa Barbara Channel, Santa Barbara, US-CA
Dec 27, 2012 10:10 AM - 2:17 PM
Protocol: Traveling
44.0 mile(s)
Comments:     Whale watching trip aboard the Condor Express. We went east southeast to Ventura and back. Unfortunately, I did not separate sightings for VenCo, but the two large feeding aggregations were in Santa Barbara County, albeit close to the VenCo border, so most birds counted were in SBCo.
13 species

Pacific Loon  175
Western Grebe  4
Black-vented Shearwater  105
Brandt's Cormorant  950    
Brown Pelican  220
Heermann's Gull  100
Western Gull  200
California Gull  1
Forster's Tern  8
Royal Tern  1
Parasitic Jaeger  2
Common Murre  965     
Rhinoceros Auklet  24

View this checklist online at http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S12409304

This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (http://ebird.org)



Santa Barbara Harbor, Santa Barbara, US-CA
Dec 27, 2012 2:35 PM - 5:05 PM
Protocol: Traveling
2.0 mile(s)
Comments:     Walk from SEA Landing to the sand spit by the harbor entrance and then to Stearn's Wharf.
34 species (+1 other taxa)

Bufflehead  20
Red-breasted Merganser  1
Common Loon  2
Pied-billed Grebe  4
Horned Grebe  10
Eared Grebe  5
Western Grebe  10
Western/Clark's Grebe  25
Double-crested Cormorant  100
Pelagic Cormorant  1
Brown Pelican  150
Great Blue Heron  2
Great Egret  2
Snowy Egret  1
American Coot  1
Black-bellied Plover  3
Killdeer  1
Spotted Sandpiper  2
Sanderling  16
Heermann's Gull  30
Mew Gull  4
Ring-billed Gull  6
Western Gull  200
California Gull  9
Herring Gull  1
Glaucous-winged Gull  1
Royal Tern  4
Black Skimmer  70
Eurasian Collared-Dove  4
American Crow  5
European Starling  2
American Pipit  2
Yellow-rumped Warbler  4
Townsend's Warbler  1
Great-tailed Grackle  4

View this checklist online at http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S12409139

This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (http://ebird.org)






Bernardo Alps
www.photocetus.com
Whalephoto at earthlink.net
310.597.0449
P.O. Box 1667
San Pedro, CA 90733