Yesterday (21 May 2011), John Shemilt, Keegan Corcoran and I went fishing/birding off eastern Long Island, traveling out to the shelf edge and from there to the outer portion of Block Canyon. It was extremely foggy inshore, and at times equally foggy well offshore, but we found some open patches and areas of warm (65-71 degree) water. Our bird list included a nice mix of winter (ATLANTIC PUFFIN, DOVEKIE and FULMAR) and summer birds (LEACH'S STORM-PETREL, GREAT and SOOTY SHEARWATER) with several transients (RED PHALAROPE, POMARINE JAEGER, ARCTIC TERN) for good measure. Highlights included a very confiding adult POMARINE JAEGER that took scraps from alongside the boat and a massive herd of 1000 or so SHORT-BEAKED COMMON DOLPHINS that rode with us for a while. All of the ATLANTIC PUFFINS were seen in the flat seas of ride home and the last FULMAR of the day was sitting on the water a mere 7.4 miles SE of Shinnecock Inlet. Here's the list:
Common Loon - 34 NORTHERN FULMAR - 5 (all light phase and various degrees of inner primary/secondary molt) MANX SHEARWATER - 1 Sooty Shearwater - 21 (surprisingly most were well offshore) GREAT SHEARWATER - 2 Wilson's Storm-Petrel - 385 LEACH'S STORM-PETREL - 1 (500 fathoms, 71 deg.F) Northern Gannet - 7 RED PHALAROPE - 33 (all in nr alt. plumage) Herring Gull - 7 Great Black-backed Gull - 8 ARCTIC TERN - 2 (both w some white on forehead) Common Tern - 32 (including several well offshore) DOVEKIE - 2 (one adult summer and one in an oddly mottled brown, ratty plumage) ATLANTIC PUFFIN - 18 Chimney Swift - 1 Long-finned Pilot Whale - 2+ RISSO'S DOLPHIN - 8+ Short-beaked Common Dolphin - 1000++ (massive playful herd, spent 20 mins visiting the boat) Offshore Bottlenose Dolphin - 18+ ATLANTIC BLUEFIN TUNA - 30++ Ocean Sunfish (mola mola) - 1 flying fish sp. - 2 Portugese Man o' War - 3 -- Angus Wilson New York City & The Springs, NY, USA http://birdingtotheend.blogspot.com/ -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
