Monterey Bay, September 13

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Monterey Bay, September 13

September 16, 2008 by Eric Preston

This is my first blog post ever. I’m not convinced the world needs yet another person trying to be heard on the Web, but I do want to share my experiences and photos with others, and some seem to appreciate it, and this is the easiest way.

I went on my fifth pelagic of the year on Saturday with Monterey Seabirds. It was a very dark and gloomy day, but the seas were greasy calm and it wasn’t too cold. This is a great time of year to be out and it was birdy (and mammaly) all day. We headed north towards Santa Cruz county since the SCZ bird club was on board and that’s where the storm-petrel flocks have been lately.

I photographed this Buller’s Shearwater early, and it was so dark due to heavy, gray skies that I had the ISO cranked to 3200. Very noisy, but a decent image.

Buller's Shearwater

I think it was Todd, but someone saw a Manx Shearwater near the back of the boat. This is not a common bird in California waters, but it’s pretty regular these days. This guy is in serious need of a molt.

Manx Shearwater

We also had a Flesh-footed Shearwater, which is uncommon, but regular these days.This guy had something wrong with one of his primaries and was probably missing at least one as well.

Flesh-footed Shearwater

At one point we came across a huge group of hundreds of Pacific White-sided Dolphins and a few Northern Right-Whale Dolphins. This youngster wanted to show off.

Pacific White-sided Dolphin

We finally found the storm-petrel flock, but they never came in close enough for a good photograph. Of course the light had really improved by this time. We were so far north we didn’t get back to Monterey until after 4. It was a great day. Here are some more images from the day.