Date: 7/8/26 4:10 pm From: Chris Overington via groups.io <chris.overington...> Subject: Re: [southbaybirds] [EBB-Sightings] Cooks Petrels offshore - Craveri's Murrelet - and new pelagic scheduled for July
Thanks Alvaro,
It was a great trip indeed! Do you know if anyone else recorded the band on
the (first) Laysan Albatross and has already reported it? If not, I can go
ahead and do it.
Thanks, Chris.
On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
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