It's that time of year again New York birders! Time for some great overnight ocean birding. The first overnight pelagic of the year will be leaving from Brooklyn on June 4. We'll steam out into the deep, and hope to see a slew of pelagic birds that can essentially only be seen in the region if you are offshore.
This is the best time of year to see South Polar Skua, and we had 6 (!!) on our last spring overnight, in 2015. We also had Long-tailed Jaeger, Pomarine Jaeger, multiple Arctic Terns, Audubon's Shearwaters, and Manx Shearwaters, over 20 Leach's Storm-Petrels, and hundreds each of Sooty and Cory's Shearwater. It was also a great non-bird trip, with breaching Basking Shark, Risso's, Common, and Offshore Bottlenose Dolphin, Several great looks at Mola Mola, Blue Shark, and 25+ Portuguese Man O' War. In addition to these, it is a fairly good time of year to see Phalaropes, and there are always good home run possibilities, since this is the time window when the pelagic trips off Cape Hatteras get the majority of their rarities (such as Bermuda Petrel, European Storm-Petrel etc.), and the only New York State record of Yellow-nosed Albatross was from a late May pelagic trip. Here are a couple of photo galleries from the 2015 overnight to whet your appetite: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29840397@N08/albums/72157653910596566 https://www.flickr.com/photos/103866258@N08/sets/72157653758717610 We leave the dock at 8 PM on Sunday June 4, and will return around 6 PM the following evening. We do this in order to maximize our time in the deep waters where the more unusual and pelagic animals are likely to be. It is now fairly easy to sign up for these trips on the website, at this link: http://paulagics.com/trips/register <https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpaulagics.com%2Ftrips%2Fregister&h=ATO-8UNM1SujXKmw5bQVUaHrH0B53tn3vqpW9oZV88Wvsxs2R93e7CRhxF3dBePijPBPiiqhI1poB4YO9bS5GVIelaVSCOBm8YNrIrEBmv1LIgsZeetYKRYQBKcoMSegXpJwpzp3mhxvj5nd&enc=AZO9ndBPUpV9tCTfquREqncLLta5uVbSS6v_tSj2vIcpsC1h0dPPl4UVRxVmubg15eAiaSvI69XD872qhKN7LMNUf8ZfRFUTIo68XFxbKjvXZx4-KEPFJwlIU-ARRg_-UVn4PFgNrnR8sTIoXvRJq2-D69CnMjljasO09Xt9BsCZimeujG47fbunrqnzrtLgVkk&s=1> More info on the pelagic here: http://paulagics.com/trips/brooklyn-pelagics <https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpaulagics.com%2Ftrips%2Fbrooklyn-pelagics&h=ATPwHtJM_-ofynN2G04Qn2CxRz8F7cUf1OeqXF-So2gDRMg_Je5hRVFYY4JiodwXtbujGxfyknt4SoRhUvVpmHCfWeO3tbWiQb4kya4tcdsDz018ratmaX3aI4lLTUvhUhnpKDTvIB8aww1i&enc=AZPAvcTwg7NSo7RcocY5ZN_oyifIFLYlg7lMLFnJcKtditbKCfd_IzlClfbW2KCmhMzaXjkqkYjcxn-c600yjtAiZT_bNCbYpINiBswjjYUZe0aXIGxfOFb89YjPaMQSSfZpKfLLU6izNKPkE7lAywRS8mwFfu26D2JsbK_zcb5DHgTQwSBFSW1D3dmv5C0wmx8&s=1> Hope to see some of you aboard! -Doug Gochfeld. Brooklyn, NY. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --