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| Yesterday about forty people adventured offshore for one of the best pelagic trips that I have seen off of Florida. We started off with scattered Cory's Shearwaters, Pomarine and a few Parasitic Jaegers and Common Terns before we ran into our first flock of Cory's. This flock consisted of about 20 Cory's Shearwaters, 3 Manx Shearwaters, and 6 Audubon's. Manx Shearwater was bird 358 for my year list. After this flock the birding went pretty quiet except for a few Bridled Terns and more Cory's Shearwaters. I was constantly throwing a dog food and pogy oil mixture off the back of the boat. At one point the boat slowed down and everyone ran to the front to see a tropicbird. We called the bird a White-tailed in the field when the barring on the back looked light and black around the eye looked small. When we examined pictures after the trip, the bird showed features that suggested a Red-billed Tropicbird. Since I needed both tropicbirds for the year, this bird was 359 at the time and by far the bird of the day. I thought this had made my weekend until we began working a Common Tern flock. While we had about 50 terns up in the air two jaegers came in, one of them being a Long-tailed, which circled the boat for a good 20 minutes. Here is a list compiled by the leaders and some photos by Bob Wallace: Cory's Shearwater 75 Audubon's Shearwater 6 Manx Shearwater 4 Red Phalarope 1 Pomarine Jaeger 25 Parasitic Jaeger 3 Long-tailed Jaeger 1 and possibly a second bird Tropicbird -- We called this bird a juvenile White-tailed Tropicbird at the time. But we are reviewing some excellent photographs and the bird looks more like a juvenile Red-billed Tropicbird in the photos -- more on that as we complete the review. Bridled Tern 40+ Northern Gannet 30 Common Tern 200+ Royal Tern Sandwich Tern Laughing Gull 2, even out at 45 miles Herring Gull 2 Palm Warbler 1 --- that kept landing on the boat.  Cory's Shearwater    Long-tailed Jaeger (with Common Terns and Pomarine Jaeger) Cory's and Manx Shearwater  Red-billed Tropicbird Compare this picture of our Red-billed Tropicbird to the bird photographed off Miami in 2006 http://tropicalaudubon.org/tasboard/messages/11237.html Thanks again to Michael Brothers for organizing this amazing trip and Bob Wallace for taking these great pictures. | ||
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