Date: 8/1/26 10:33 pm From: Braxton Landsman via groups.io <balbhl...> Subject: [OrangeCountyBirding] Recent offshore Newport Beach reports and first county record GUADALUPE MURRELET
Birders,
I figured I’d make a post about three recent 2 hour whale watching trips I’ve been on out of Davey’s Locker in Newport Harbor, as they’ve been shockingly productive as of late. All of these boats are relatively cheap and only go a couple miles off the coast.
On July 25, the 8:30am boat produced a Manx Shearwater, adult Coco’s Booby, a pair of Craveri’s Murrelets, Cassin’s Auklets, along with excellent numbers (for close to shore) of Black Storm-Petrel, and Black-vented and Sooty Shearwaters. Also present was my only jaeger in the past week or two, a bird that I feel is probably Pomarine.
On July 29, myself and several friends headed out on the 9:00am boat, which again, came through. This time the highlights included a very cooperative Nazca Booby just a handful of miles off of Newport Pier, as well as a slightly uncommon in mid-summer Scripps’s Murrelet. Excellent numbers of Black-vented Shearwaters were present, along with both Sooty and Pink-footed, however no Manx were detected. A handful of Black Storm-Petrels flew around.
Today, August 1 was much slower overall (we went slightly more south towards Crystal Cove SP), and encountered far fewer shearwaters and storm petrels, yet all 3 species of shearwater were still present. The trip was made well worth it, though, with a cooperative (long overdue) first county record GUADALUPE MURRELET at the following coordinates (33.52950° N, 117.90748° W). Photos are up on eBird: https://ebird.org/checklist/S378796004
We were all joking about how I’d seen the other two members off this species complex on previous trips, and how today would have to be Guadalupe. Of course, we never expected this to truly happen and completely flipped out and scared almost everyone on board. I guess Tino Castillo isn’t 100% immune to alcids…
The warm waters of El Niño clearly seem to be having at least some effect offshore locally, with more subtropical species as described above showing up in recent days just a few miles off the coast. Hopefully this trend continues into late summer and fall when longer, dedicated pelagic trips take place.
