Date: 7/8/26 9:51 am From: Liam Murphy via groups.io <liammsf...> Subject: Re: [SFBirds] Cooks Petrels offshore - Craveri's Murrelet - and new pelagic scheduled for July
Great summary Alvaro and it was really super to be out there with you on a
couple of the trips!
One correction if I may is that the Craveri's were seen early in the day on
Sunday, while we were still in San Mateo County. The county-birder part of
me hopes we can connect with them in San Francisco eventually!
Great season this is shaping up to be, good birding all and hope to see
some of you out on pelagics soon!
Cheers,
Liam Murphy
On Wed, Jul 8, 2026, 9:33 AM Alvaro Jaramillo via groups.io <chucao=
<coastside.net...> wrote:
> Hello all
>
>
>
> The three back-to-back trips, two to the Farallon Islands last Friday
> and Saturday as well as the Half Moon Bay trip on Sunday were superb. Apart
> from the amazing yet regular species we see in abundance on the Farallon
> Islands we saw a lot of unusual birds offshore. I think that if one had to
> back up to the 10,000-foot view, Black Storm-Petrels are well inshore and
> relatively easy to find. We found them inside of the Farallon Islands, and
> some were quite close to shore out of Half Moon Bay. Folks who seawatch
> should be on the lookout for them as they are closer to shore than we have
> ever seen them around here. The other story is that Scripps’s Murrelets
> seem to be out there in numbers, they are not always an easy species to
> pick out when weather is choppy. But we saw them on all three trips
> including the Farallon Island trips where we have limited time offshore.
> Northern Fulmar is also here in numbers that are not always this high in
> mid-summer. The implication is that we have birds heading to us from the
> south (murrelet, storm petrel) and from the north (Northern Fulmar). The
> behavior of the storm petrels being closer to shore than normal is surely
> food oriented, but we do not understand why.
>
> Now for the unusual stuff. Friday the 3d we saw that Ancient Murrelet
> on the Farallon trip. Unusual, but they are being recorded in well above
> average numbers in various spots in California and Oregon. Again, a bird
> seemingly retreating from poor food areas in the north. Sunday though blew
> the roof off things, as this was a trip where we were able to spend time
> well offshore. We found 5 species of storm-petrels! They were Black, Ashy,
> Wilson’s, Fork-tailed and Leach’s. There were multiple Leach’s (3), which
> is always a difficult species for us here. Black Storm-Petrels were the
> most common, and this is not the long term normal, but it has happened in
> warm water years. We discovered that a pair of murrelets that flew by and
> were photographed were in fact Craveri’s Murrelets, 16 Scripps’s Murrelets
> were seen to highlight that they are numerous out there. But THE star of
> the show was Cook’s Petrels. Some of the folks who go out regularly will be
> amazed, flabbergasted even to hear that we saw more Cook’s Petrels than
> Pink-footed Shearwaters! At times flocks of Cook’s were visible sitting on
> the water, and some great looks were had although often they did go by at a
> distance. Photos below in the trip report. A total of 55 was estimated for
> Cook’s, and it likely was higher. Amazing. We think this situation will
> continue into July unless conditions change radically. A couple of folks
> saw a Flesh-footed Shearwater, and a nice number of Black-footed Albatross
> was accented by a gorgeous adult Laysan Albatross that joined in the mix.
> The birding was non-stop, superb. The Cook’s and Craveri’s and Laysan were
> in San Francisco counties. We hope that if weather allows on upcoming
> trips, we can look for these birds in both counties. We also had some
> superb marine mammal watching, but the best was a Blue Whale that decided
> to actually circle our boat. Just fantastic!
>
> Given that our July 18 trip heading offshore is sold out and we sense
> there is great interest to get out there, we have added a trip out of Half
> Moon Bay on July 25 on the New Captain Pete. You can book on the link
> below.
>
>
>
> https://www.alvarosadventures.com/pelagic-dates-2026.html >
>
>
> Trip reports for the three trips are below:
>
> Friday Farallon Is
>
> https://ebird.org/tripreport/546980 >
> Saturday Farallon Is.
>
> https://ebird.org/tripreport/547008 >
> Sunday offshore
>
> https://ebird.org/tripreport/547114 >
>
>
> Good birding.
>
> Alvaro Jaramillo
>
> <alvaro...>
>
> www.alvarosadventures.com
>
>
>
>
