Hi I was fortunate to be on the pelagic organized by Dave Perekstra today, out of Dana Point. He can write about the seabirds and cetaceans. The reason that I am writing this email is to describe the warbler fallout that we had over open water. In this case, the word "fallout" is literally what happened. Warblers were flying towards the boat and they would repeatedly attempt to land, chicken out, veered away from the boat, attempt a second landing, chicken out again, and then finally give up and land on the roof of the boat. Many warblers did not make it and they dropped into the ocean. Randomly the boat would pass a dead migrant songbird floating in the water. Dave was able to reach down into the water and save some of the birds, including a Hammond's Flycatcher. When we got to shore, neither the Hammond's Flycatcher nor the Wilson's Warbler wanted to fly out of his hand and go to the trees to eat (remarkably, there was some big fat moths on the boat and they hand fed the Hammond's Flycatcher while he was inside a tupperware container, and he greedily wolfed it down). Other birds that rested on the boat for a while before leaving included several more Wilson's warblers, a Townsend's Warbler and Western Tanagers. One of the Western Tanagers caught a large moth on the boat and flew off with it.
