Date: 8/5/26 3:12 pm From: Alvaro Jaramillo via groups.io <chucao...> Subject: Re: [CALBIRDS] boobies, boobies, and more boobies (and other warm-water species)
Paul et al.
Some thoughts from farther south. I was just leading a tour in the Galapagos, the epicenter of the El Niño of course. It is hard to make a really exact report of what is going on down there, given that some colonies are large and it is often impossible to detect a sizeable decrease in birds when the numbers are big. Our brains just do not do that well. However, it looked to me that seabirds such as boobies, Waved Albatross etc were late in their breeding, maybe a month later than standard? There were some dead birds noted, skinny sea lion pups etc. But overall a lot down there still looks “normal.” I do think that there were fewer Red-billed Tropicbirds than usual, and birds offshore (between islands) seemed to be much less than the norm, in particular Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrels and Galapagos Shearwaters. Our only oddities were two Cocos Boobies, they are actually quite rare there, so two within an hour was quite a find. The first Peruvian Booby for the islands was reported in July.
In any case, I would expect that a lot of the breeding will fail in the coming months and there will be more birds escaping very warm water areas without food. I would be on the lookout for Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel in particular, and it would not be insane if a Galapagos Shearwater got to southern California.
Maybe my loose observations will be of interest even though they are from well south of California
From: <CALBIRDS...> <CALBIRDS...> On Behalf Of <lehman.paul...> via groups.io
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2026 1:37 PM
To: <calbirds...>
Subject: [CALBIRDS] boobies, boobies, and more boobies (and other warm-water species)
Likely related to the warm water currently wafting off the coast (mid-70s!) from Mexico/Central America to Southern California, there has been a clear influx of Masked/Nazca Boobies, with most birds being either Nazca or unidentified. Scheduled pelagic trips and whale-watch trips off San Diego, and to a lesser extent at least off Los Angeles, have now reported a fair number over the past two months, a young Masked/Nazca has been roosting on the tip of Zuniga Jetty at San Diego Bay mouth for over the past two weeks, and for the past several days there have been two young Masked/Nazca's off La Jolla around 7:00-7:30 AM. Nazcas and sp.'s have been reported the past several months north all the way to off Northern California.
Cocos Boobies are in reasonable numbers off San Diego on a daily basis in the AM off Imperial Beach (especially) and off La Jolla.
So far there have been "just" several Red-footed Boobies in San Diego County waters the past few months, and about half of those have been dead birds found on the beach.
A Blue-footed Booby was photographed just off the coast in s. Orange County a few days ago.
In contrast, there have only been several young Magnificent Frigatebirds seen this summer in Southern California waters, so nothing special there.
A Wedge-rumped Storm-Petrel was photographed off northern Baja (between Tijuana and Ensenada) a few days ago.
