THIS IS THE HARTFORD AUDUBON SOCIETY GULF OF MAINE PELAGIC TRIP ON SEPT.17-18, 2016:
We got our #1 target bird, Great Skua (aka GRSK), at least two of them, far off shore, both on Sunday September 18, 2016.
Here is one of the two skuas we saw, in mid-GOM; this one closer to Maine than Nova Scotia. Both popped up on the north (starboard) side of the ship and quickly flew away, apparently as the ship got too close to them in the water. Photo thanks to Dave Pettee...
This trip was designed this year as an experiment, a test of the new ferry, on this long (210 miles each way) and sometimes rough route (so rough that it is cancelled several times a year). We "advertised" only one week in advance, so as to get a small group of motivated birders who were "up" for this experimental trip. Several birders were not sure about this trip, and we recommended they take the always successful Maine Audubon pelagic trip, on the same weekend (and it was very successful last weekend, including more skuas than we had). Our trip did have its challenges but we dug-in, and we dug-out some good birds, including our #1Target bird, Great Skua, two of them, fairly close to the ship. So, overall this trip was successful, and a good learning experience about this new ship, which is frankly a lot better than we expected (including a staff which was super cooperative and helpful in working with us).
This was an experimental birding trip, with additional "benefits"...
1. One key goal for this trip was to see one or more skuas, and we accomplished that.
2. Another goal was to enjoy the beautiful wild Gulf Of Maine. We certainly did that.
3. We also hoped to enjoy a small team of talented friendly birding enthusiasts, and we had that.
4. We also wanted to learn what more science might be possible on this ship, and we made progress.
5. Another key goal was to evaluate & test this new ship's "birder-friendliness", to find the best locations and ways to watch birds from this new ship. We observed from inside the front windows, from the two open side areas, from the open rear deck, and from inside the bridge (as you can see from the photos directly below)...
We got special access to the bridge, thanks to Bay Ferries Ltd. Thank you!
Here is Dan and Anthony scanning forward, from the left wing of the bridge, of the new 350-foot CAT ferry...
And here is Nicole (left) scanning forward for rare birds, with Gretchen Holoubek, Second Officer, on-watch, in the bridge, "steering" the ship....
Most of our observations, especially on the second day, were from the two open side areas. Whichever open side area was on the north side seemed the better of the two for birds, and for also avoiding the winds from the south. The right/starboard side open area was the only smoking area on the ship, and yet almost nobody ever came and smoked there (at least during the transit, when we were there). The first 1/3 of these side decks had protection from the wind generated by the 35knot speed of the ship, while the rear 2/3 of them experienced much of the winds (and a bit of the spray) caused by the ship's speed. Nevertheless, these open side areas became our preferred areas on the ship for observing seabirds...
Our team: Dave Pettee (from MA), Nicole Giambro (MA), Christine Howe (from CT/HAS), Dan Nickerson (ME), Anthony Laguidara (MA), and photo by Tom Robben (CT/HAS)...
Another open area was the open rear deck... shown here the way it looked on 9/12, which was a beautiful cloudless day. This is a great area to sit down and relax. A lot of hot air comes out of the exhausts, however, and some of the air behind the ship gets distorted by that, so some bird viewing can be difficult at times from this location, as can happen on many large ships....
Another good area is the front windows and the comfortable seats in that area, photographed here on 9/12, a sunny day. The cenral tables and chairs one level up were best, because from there you had a panoramic 180degree view, over the heads of people sitting in the front tables. This can be a good location to start the trip, or to use in stormy weather, however this vantage spot is a bit too removed from the water to easily spot smaller birds like storm-petrels, so we ended up preferring the excellent open side areas as the best viewing locations on the ship...
Here are some of the oceanographic conditions, at the main buoy at Jordan Basin, in mid-GOM (my red arrow points to the particular buoy), the next day, but with conditions almost identical to what we had on 9/18, except that it was windier on 9/18, along with lots (95%) of clouds and occasional light rain showers (which had almost no impact on us, because of protected areas on the ship -- how nice to be unaffected by the rainy weather!). Click on the image to enlarge it, and press ESC to return...
Here is our actual route map (logged via GPS device and resulting GPX file), on Saturday, September 17th, 210 miles from Portland ME to Yarmouth NS, where green circles are Christmas Bird Count circles. You can click on this image to enlarge it, and press ESC key to return....
This map shows the (yellow) Hague Line, which separates the GOM into US and Canadian waters. The red line is the ferry route, also known as the GNATS transect by scientists (for GOM North Atlantic Time Series). Note that at least 2/3 of our trip along this red line is in US waters, and less than 1/3 is in Canadian waters....
This is it for all of the Americas... ALL of the North American eBird reports for GRSK... with most of them in the northern half of the Gulf Of Maine, including several which we have contributed from the Nova Star over the last two years (although we have not reported all our sightings to eBird)...
EBIRD CHECKLISTS FOR SEPTEMBER 17, 2016:
Dave Pettee created two eBird checklists for our Sept.17th trip from Portland ME to Yarmouth NS. Here is the first one, for the first half of the trip, on the US side...
eBird Checklist – Ferry Trip - Yarmouth, NS to Portland, ME, Maine – Sat Sep 17, 2016 – 11 species (+1 other taxa)
Here is the one for the Canadian side, for the second half on Sept.17, for Nova Scotia waters...
eBird Checklist – Portland, Maine - Yarmouth, Nova Scotia Ferry (NS waters), Nova Scotia – Sat Sep 17, 2016 – 7 species
EBIRD CHECKLISTS FOR SEPTEMBER 18, 2016:
Dave Pettee also created several eBird reports for our Sept.18 return trip, starting with one for the Yarmouth harbor area...
eBird Checklist – Yarmouth Harbour--Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia – Sun Sep 18, 2016 – 15 species
All of these harbor birds were excluded from all other reporting for this trip.
and then two offshore, covering our two Great Skuas. The first one for the Canadian waters...
eBird Checklist – Portland, Maine - Yarmouth, Nova Scotia Ferry (NS waters), Nova Scotia – Sun Sep 18, 2016 – 8 species (+2 other taxa)
and this second one (with a photo of one of our two Great Skuas) for US waters....
eBird Checklist – Ferry Trip - Yarmouth, NS to Portland, ME, Maine – Sun Sep 18, 2016 – 9 species
OVERALL CHECKLIST OF BIRDS:
Here is our checklist for 3 of our CAT/GOM crossings in Sept.2016, with all birds within harbors excluded...
Species checklist for Sept.2016 CAT/GOM trips - Google Sheets
The first tab is the summary sheet (as shown in the image above), for 9/17 and 18, plus the prep trip on 9/12. The second tab shows minute-by-minute details of 9/17.
Interesting differences between Monday 9/12 and the weekend. Many more gannets, gulls and jaegers on 9/12. The gull numbers were estimated (as were most larger numbers), but the jaegers were counted more than estimated, and seen well, many near the ship. Perhaps the calm sunny weather on Monday encouraged the gulls in the harbors to go out fishing. Storm-petrels were looked for on 9/12 but could not be found, while many were seen on the weekend. Quite a lot of variability in just one week, during this changing time of year.
The greater number of species seen on the weekend probably reflects the number of observers watching: one on Monday and six on the weekend. There is no way for one person to see everything six observers can see, especially speeding 35 knots at sea.
By the way, Maine Audubon had its usual annual dedicated pelagic trip on 9/17 with 50 observers, and as always, was excellent and very successful, going to some of the best locations in the northern GOM, recording about seven skuas, plus a good list of species very similar to ours....
Bar Harbor Pelagic Trip 2016 | Events & Programs
pelagic-route-2016.jpg (3259×2333)
eBird Checklist – Maine Audubon Pelagic 2016-- Segment IV, Maine – Sat Sep 17, 2016 – 5 species
Birding News | #birdingnews via @aba << posting on the Maine birds internet forum.
Bottom line: we had a successful trip on Bay Ferry's CAT ship, with only six observers, even with no chumming and no pursuit of birds. But we did have to work for it. This included a thrilling ride across 210 miles of open water, twice. And the ship gets unexpectedly high-marks (for a commercial public ship) from a seabirding point of view!
How we scanned this 210 mile transect, twice, within 24hours, at 35knots, will be described here.
Trip details coming, here, this week.
LESSONS LEARNED:
Will be drafted here next week, with suggestions from our whole team. One is this...
Our two Great Skuas popped-up right next to the ship, and probably were sitting in the water, and disturbed by the ship's approach. We did not see them approach the ship, in flight, before they suddenly appeared next to us, on the north side of the ship.
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and here is the trip report as submitted to MaineBirds internet forum:
2more Great Skuas on Sept.18 GOM ferry crossing:
GREAT SKUAS SEEN ALONG 210-MILE "CAT" FERRY CROSSING OF GOM
Hi Everyone:
September 17-18 was the only weekend we could schedule this long Gulf Of Maine "overnight pelagic"
round-trip for, and sorry for the Saturday conflict with the excellent annual Maine Audubon pelagic trip, but we (6 observers assembled together with only one week lead time) did okay with the birds, including our #1 target, GREAT SKUA; we got two of them, fairly close to the ship on 9/18. As noted in 3 places below, I also ran a preparatory trip on this route on Sept.12th and filled-in a few additional species (Fulmar, Cory's and one more Great Skua):
Northern Fulmar - 0, 0 (10 on Monday 9/12 prep trip).
Cory's Shearwater - 0, 0 (1 on Monday 9/12).
Great Shearwater - 20, 85.
Sooty Shearwater - 0, 0.
Manx Shearwater - 3, 2.
Wilson's Storm-Petrel -200, 40.
Leach's Storm-Petrel - 0, 2.
Northern Gannet - 32, 32.
Double-crested Cormorant - 1, 0.
Red-necked Phalarope - 2, 0.
phalarope species - 12, 14.
Black-legged Kittiwake - 2, 0.
Bonaparte's Gull - 10, 0.
Herring Gull - 7, 3.
Great Black-backed Gull - 15, 9.
Lesser Black-backed Gull - 2, 1.
tern species - 31, 6.
Arctic Tern - 13, 0.
GREAT SKUA - 0, 2 (plus 1 on Monday 9/12)
Pomarine Jaeger - 3, 2.
Long-tailed Jaeger - 0, 0.
jaeger species - 3, 16.
Atlantic Puffin - 1, 0.
The pairs of numbers shown are for birds seen on 9/17 and on 9/18, the two legs of our GOM ferry round trip, 210-miles each way. Harbor birds are excluded.
We also confirmed that the new CAT ferry (formerly called Alakai Superferry, when it was working in Hawaii) is more birder-friendly than we expected. Even at high speed (35 knots) the ship is stable and has less vibration than we expected. The front views from behind glass are good, and the two side views from open decks are excellent and a full 180 degrees wide. The open rear deck is a good place to sit and relax, but hot exhaust from the engines
can blur parts of that rear view. All onboard facilities are very good, and the crew is very friendly and helpful.
Thanks to our collaborative team of six Observers that worked well together:
Nicole Giambro, Christine Howe, Anthony Laguidara, Dan Nickerson, Dave Pettee, Tom Robben.
Thanks to HAS (Hartford Audubon Society, CT) for enabling this trip, and thanks to Bay Ferries Ltd for working closely with us on this project.
For more trip details and photos, see this website:
And see David Pettee eBird reports on 9/18/2016 for skua photos.
Thanks and good birding,
Tom Robben
Photos by Chris Howe from GOM trip on 2016 Sept.17-18:
Clhowe2 | Flickr
Please remember that all these highly-cropped photos (of distant birds) were taken on 2 windy days, from a high-speed ferry zooming along at 35knots!
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| Leach's Storm-petrel on Sept.18th. Photo by Chris Howe. |
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| Pomarine Jaeger on Sept.18th. Photo by Chris Howe. |
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| Distant Northern Fulmar on Sept.17th. Photo by Chris Howe. Needs to be added to our checklist. |
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| Cory's Shearwater on Sept.18th. Photo by Chris Howe. Needs to be added to our checklist. |
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| Great Shearwater on Sept.18th. Photo by Chris Howe. |
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| Great Shearwater on 2016-09-18 mid GOM. Photo by Chris Howe. |
