Tuesday, July 15
We arose early on the second day, after a somewhat hot night (Lisa assures
us that the air conditioner in the bunk area will be fixed next year!).
Pancakes and sausage woke us up, and despite the fog and drizzle, the
plan for the day to make our way through the canyons, hitting Hydrographer's
Canyon in the mid-afternoon,raised both
our White-faced Storm-Petrel radar
and our spirits. Another
Sperm Whale sighting got us geared up for seeing cetaceans as well, and
several of the bizarre Ocean Sunfish floated past, bobbing in the water
hoping
that their mouths would run across jellyfish.
The lazy flapping of a few more Cory's Shearwaters kept us entertained, although we noticed a distinct dearth of Greater Shearwaters and Wilson's Storm-Petrels, traded instead for many more Leach's in singles and pairs. Our birding senses really began to tingle about 7:30 in the morning as the expert eyes of Brian Patteson and Mike Overton in the stern spotted "a high-flier" coming in across the horizon. A short view with binocs told them the whole story, and soon Brian was running to the bow shouting "Tropicbird!" as my heart and those of the couple other birders in the front, Scott Chenoweth and Kate Sutherland (a spotter from the North Carolina crew) started beating faster.
Kate assured us that, although nobody usually
believed it at first, tropicbirds were curious birds. As if to prove her
correct, the large white wings and tail
made a beeline straight toward us. As the bird approached, the extensive
black wingtips became more and more obvious, and the bill color became
evident - a deep, almost crimson red. The CORE trip had occasionally seen
White tailed Tropicbirds in years past. However, a Red-Billed Tropicbird
was a recorded trip first, and probably one of a handful of Massachusetts
state records as well. It did "the tropicbird thing," checking
out our boat for 10-20 seconds, then sailing off to disappear as quickly
as it had arrived. As we recovered from the adrenaline rush, Brian explained
again that, if we were to see a tropicbird, he was not surprised to see
a Red-billed instead of a White-tailed on the trip, since this year seemed
to be a very good year for them down in North Carolina. We were in no
stage to complain about either, especially not about saving ourselves
a couple trips to California for a life bird. And it was only 7:45 in
the morning…
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Before noon, the skies were as deep blue as the water and the occasional Portuguese Man O'War jellyfish floating by reminded us that we were over more than a mile of ocean depth. We continued along the 1000-fathom depth contour line through the late morning and turned up to explore Oceanographer's Canyon, about 25 miles east of Hydrographer's Canyon. We came across more Bottlenose dolphins, this group much more curious than the first ones. They spent about 10-20 minutes riding our bow, at times leaping completely out of the water barely 10 feet from us so that we got wet from the splashes as they landed. At one point, we also saw what we first thought was a dolphin leap completely out of the water, but what became evident as an unusual Beaked Whale only as we passed by, unfortunately too quickly to identify it to species.
As we passed through Welker Canyon and began to approach Hydrographer's Canyon (about 10 miles to the east-southeast of us) in mid-afternoon, the sun was getting lower on the horizon about 15 degrees off the port side of our bow. Kate Sutherland and I were covering the bow and Brian was up near the wheelhouse, scanning directly off the bow and to the starboard, beginning to search intently for anything small and out-of-the-ordinary. I kept watch on the opposite side to try to cover the area. About 4:00, as we traveled southeast at about 8-10 knots, I noticed something
gleaming directly off the port side of the
boat. What I saw was gleaming white, and had the
shape of a storm petrel, but was moving faster than the boat, very low
to the water and was not flapping its wings. Raising my binocs, I saw
a black comma near its eye and then saw the slight vertical undulation.
I watched for a half-second more - there it was, a definite splash as
the bird pogo-sticked off the water with its feet. I screamed "White-faced!
Nine-o'-clock!" and Kate was on the bird as well, confirming the
ID of White-Faced Storm-Petrel.
This is the point where my memory of the events
begins to go into slow motion. Lisa Fox saw the bird and recognized it
as a storm petrel the likes of which she had never seen before. Brian
Patteson ran across with his camera to the port side of the upper deck.
The boat slowed down and turned to the left, as the bird seemed to magically
disappear in front of Kate's and my eyes. At that same moment, Brian shouted
"Bridled Tern - Ten o'clock!" and another bird appeared as magically
as the storm-petrel had disappeared. With pointed wings carrying its distinctly
light-gray body on a noticeably buoyant flight, the Bridled Tern passed
from the stern
across toward the bow of the boat and disappeared off to the starboard.
I began to catch my breath after seeing two more tropical life birds off
the New England coast within the course of ten seconds.
In the confusion, the boat had turned toward the Bridled Tern, and our bearings on the storm-petrel were, of course, hopelessly lost. We searched the area with the boat and binocs for a short while, trying to relocate the storm-petrel, then decided to keep heading toward Hydrographer's Canyon through large groups of Risso's Dolphins. Since the bird was heading in that direction faster than we had been, we hoped that we might relocate it there, but as we traveled up the remainder of Hydrographer's Canyon, it appeared that we had used up our luck for the day, with most everybody getting good looks at the Tropicbird and the Bridled Tern, but only three of us managing to see the storm-petrel. We ate another good meal and enjoyed a beautiful ocean sunset, and went to bed as we continued to steam northward slowly during the night.
