Date: 11/23/25 1:09 pm From: Naresh Satyan via groups.io <naresh.satyan...> Subject: [LACoBirds] San Pedro channel update
Hi all,
Yesterday I went on an extended whale watching trip in the San Pedro channel out of Newport Beach. Happily, lots of humpback whales were in the San Pedro channel, so we spent about 9 hours checking the waters from Lasuen sea mount in Orange County west to the 270 Bank in the western San Pedro channel in LA county.
There is currently a lot of food in the channel, and some spectacular feeding activity close to the surface. Marine mammal activity was great -- 18 different humpback whales, a couple of fin whales and an elephant seal along with common dolphins anywhere you looked.
Bird numbers were impressive. Even though I did not see any "rare" birds yesterday, it was one of the best days out on the water in a while.
Black-vented Shearwaters continue to be south of us. There were about 2500 birds in Orange County waters, but only single-digit numbers in LA waters. However, there were still dozens of Pink-footed Shearwaters lingering into late November in the channel. There were no other tubenoses, and a single Common Murre was the only alcid I was able to pick out in fairly choppy waters. A good number of Pomarine Jaegers continued, mostly associating with Black-vented Shearwater and Bonaparte's Gull flocks. I also had a single Parasitic Jaeger.
Feeding frenzies were dominated by several gull species, with at least 2000 California Gulls being present in one of the massive flocks at one point (best estimate with thousands of gulls around us). There were also hundreds of Bonaparte's Gulls, all having arrived in the past month. I tried to look at every single Bonaparte's Gull, and didn't see any with dark undersides to any primaries. Heermann's Gulls and Western Gulls were present in good numbers, along with one or two young Glaucous-winged and American Herring Gulls.
We had a few Forster's Terns and Elegant Terns offshore. I haven't found Elegant Terns anywhere on the beaches in the last couple of weeks. Loons were migrating south -- mostly a small number of Pacific Loons, with singleton Common and Red-throated Loons.
