Just offshore, we started seeing groups of Red-necked Phalaropes, the first of many Black-vented Shearwaters, plus Cassin's Auklet, Sabine's Gull, a breeding-plumaged Black Tern, a young booby that was either a Masked or Nazca Booby, which can't be confidently identified until they acquire their adult plumage, and my 'life' Cocos Booby!
In the area of the "Nine Mile Bank", the first two Pink-footed Shearwaters were seen. The "San Diego Trough" added a Least Tern, a Black-footed Albatross, a few Black Storm-Petrels, and another Cocos Booby.
We spent about three hours at the "Thirty Mile Bank", which produced most of the interesting birds. An impressive 21 Black-footed Albatrosses were counted with several close enough for good photos.
Black Storm-Petrels became more evident as we got farther from shore. It's one of the larger storm-petrels with fairly long wings and a tail with a noticeable notch.
We were looking through the numbers of Black Storm-Petrels for "white-rumped" Storm-Petrels. When one was found, the challenge was to determine whether it was a Leach's Storm-Petrel or a Townsend's Storm-Petrel. These are separated mainly by how far the white rump extends down the tail, not an easy thing to do as these fairly small birds quickly maneuver past the boat as it's bobbing up and down. The white rump on the Townsend's extends more than halfway down the tail. I was lucky to get some fairly good photos of my 'life' Townsend's Storm-Petrel as it flew past.
The shorter rump patch on Leach's Storm-Petrels are often all white, but there is also the "Chapman's" race, which vary from having white strips down each side of the dusky patch to all dusky or dark. Later, one of these "dark-rumped" Leach's Storm-Petrel zipped by.
At this distance from shore, the numbers of Pink-footed Shearwaters replaced the Black-vented Shearwaters. Here are some photos I got of the Pink-footeds.
Other birds seen at the "Thirty Mile Bank" included 2 Sabine's Gulls, a Common Tern, 9 Sooty Shearwaters, and another Cocos Booby. We also saw an aircraft carrier out there. It was amazing how big of a wake it created.
We headed back towards shore and, along the "Lower Nine Mile Bank, found Pomarine Jaeger, Cassin's Auklet, Sabine's Gull, and two more young Masked/Nazca Boobies.
On the way back to the dock, I mentioned that I wasn't having any luck with finding Burrowing Parakeets. One of the leaders on the boat, Dan Jehl, snickered and said that he had three in his backyard the day before, which was in the area of San Diego State University. Another birder, Dan King, told me that two other birders on the boat were also looking for the parakeets. That's how I met Josh Jones and his son from Maryland. I found out that they had also been unsuccessful in National City. I told him that a local El Cajon resident had shown me cell phone photos of some taken at Renette Park in El Cajon, so we exchanged phone numbers and decided to meet there about an hour before sunset.
The boat docked around 5:00 PM. I went and got something to eat, and met Josh at the park. We did see a few groups of parrots fly by, including these Red-crowned Amazons, but there were no sign of the parakeets.
We both headed for our motels to get some sleep before tomorrow's boat trip.
