Date: 5/17/26 10:18 am From: <lehman.paul...> via groups.io <lehman.paul...> Subject: [SanDiegoRegionBirding] La Jolla: Manx & 18,000 Sooties, 1700 pelicans
A seawatch at La Jolla first thing Sunday morning produced high counts of 18,000 Sooty Shearwaters and 1700 Brown Pelicans. The shearwaters were all streaming south for the first 90 minutes (6:00-7:30AM) but then dried up. The pelicans were mostly standing on the cliffs and the rocks in front of seawatch and were the most I'd ever seen all at once there. And like the shearwaters, their numbers thinned as the morning wore on. A single Manx Shearwater flew by after all the Sooties had cleared out--the only black-and-white shearwater seen today. One Pomarine and two Parasitic Jaegers. Still good numbers of mostly one-year-old Heermann's Gulls (180) with now several adults present as well, perhaps early-arriving failed breeders from the south?
By the way, 18,000 Sooty Shearwaters would have been nothing back in the 1970s and 1980s, but major declines in this species (and in Short-tailed) since then means that the many counts of yesteryear of six digits and occasional million or more are pretty much a thing of the past in many areas.
--Paul Lehman & Jay Desgrosellier, San Diego
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