The waters were rippled yesterday, which made it tough to spot the smaller birds on the surface. As a result, no murrelets were found the entire day. This morning's waters were really smooth. As a result, off Mission Bay, two murrelets were spotted and were soon identified as Scripps's Murrelets, an unexpected life bird for me! This species is usually gone from the area by this time of the year. Thankfully, they didn't take off right away, so I was able to get some distant but identifiable photos of them showing the crescent above the eye, the white notch in front of the eye, and the white wing linings.
Sabine's Gulls and Black-vented Shearwaters were present here and off Point Loma, where the smooth waters produced fairly close looks at Cassin's Auklets.
Two Pomarine Jaegers were also seen along this stretch. Four more Pomarine Jaegers and one Parasitic Jaeger, plus the first Pink-footed Shearwaters, and our first Cocos Booby of the day were found along the "Lower Nine Mile Bank".
The "San Diego Trough" produced a Red Phalarope among the Red-neckeds, and the first Black-footed Albatross, Sooty Shearwater, and storm-petrels of the day. Things got a lot more interesting when we got to the "Thirty Mile Bank". A South Polar Skua flew along the boat and landed for a while.
Soon after, a Laysan Albatross was spotted and allowed me to get some nice photos of it.
An estimated record 22 Black-footed Albatrosses were counted, including 14 in one group.
I managed to get some better photos of storm-petrels on this trip. Here are some of a "white-rumped" Leach's Storm-Petrel. Note that the white doesn't reach the halfway point of the tail.
Here are some of "Chapman's" Leach's Storm-Petrels showing the white markings along the outside edges of the dusky rump patch.
I was only able to get this one mediocre photo of a Townsend's Storm-Petrel today.
A 'chum slick' that was put down a little earlier quickly attracted a bunch of birds that included at least a hundred Black Storm-Petrels.
Also in the area were Sabine's Gulls, and Pink-footed and Sooty Shearwaters.
We headed back towards the "Lower Nine Mile Bank" and checked out the border security buoy where we saw what appeared to be the same two young Masked/Nazca Boobies that we saw there yesterday.
Soon after, another booby flew in. It was an adult male Cocos Booby! The males have a 'frosted' head and neck. It was the only male we would see during the two boat trips. Luckily, it cooperated nicely for photos.
It landed near the boat for a little while and then took off.
On the way back in off Point Loma, another young Masked/Nazca Booby made one pass by the boat.
The boat again docked around 5:00 PM. I got something to eat and then staked out the E. 2nd Street & 'D' Avenue location until dark. Once again, there were no parakeets. While there, I called Josh Jones and we came up with a plan for the next morning. They would check the area around the unversity while I would go to National City and check out Kimball Park and the E. 2nd Street & 'D' Avenue location again. If any were found, we'd let the other one know. I went back to the motel and got to celebrate today's 'lifer' again with ice cream.
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