Most of my birding efforts in off-shore RI
waters have been limited to several rides on the ferry to and from Block Island
– I’ve called them “poor man’s pelagic trips”.
Then last year I found out that there is a whale watch company in RI, and
took one mid-summer whale watch trip. That’s
not to say I haven’t tried to go on real pelagics out of RI. I think I’ve signed-up for no less than 4
pelagic trips organized by local birder Carlos Pedro, though each one has been
cancelled by weather or mechanical issues.
But despite limited opportunities I’ve done pretty well in RI, getting
the four typical Shearwaters (Great, Cory’s, Sooty, and the less likely Manx), and
the expected Wilson’s Storm-Petrel along with the rarer Leach’s Storm-Petrel. Alcids have been limited to Razorbills and
Common Murres, seen both from shore and on one winter Block Island trip. And even with one very distant Parasitic
Jaeger I’ve seen from shore, I have lots of potential pelagic statebirds to
hope for. As a result I jumped at the
opportunity to go on a pelagic trip scheduled in late September by the newly
formed Ocean State Bird Club. With good
weather predicted, it looked like I would finally get on a RI pelagic.
With hopes of seeing Jaegers and Phalaropes
(and dare I say even rarer species), I arrived at the dock in Galilee quite
early. There were a number of fishermen milling
about with their gear and coolers, all eventually boarding the larger boats of
the Frances Fleet. As the birders
started to arrive we soon realized we had been relegated to one of the smaller
boats, which was likely not going to be fast enough to chase after
anything. And since the boat was small
it’s a good thing that seas were predicted to only be 1-3 feet.
We left the dock at 7 and started motoring
SE towards deeper water. Soon after we
left the harbor an adult Gannet passed close by followed by several more
individuals. Then a few minutes later I
noticed a large dark bird flying near the boat.
I quickly got it in my binoculars and it was an adult Jaeger. It passed right by our bow, and several
birders got photographs. We all agreed
that it was a Parasitic – not a new statebird but certainly a much better view
than the one I had from shore a couple years ago. This was a great start well before we had
reached Block Island.
A bit later we turned a bit more to the east
to head toward a large number of fishing boats.
Included in the group was a trawler that had just hauled in its
nets. As we neared the trawler we could
see a fair-sized flock of gulls on the water, and lots of dead bait fish floating
on the surface. It was sobering to see
all these fish killed in the trawler’s nets and then just cast overboard. We waited in the area quite a while, and
eventually saw one Cory’s Shearwater join the gull flock, but that was all. We then headed farther southeast to another
group of boats, but just found a few gulls there.
As the day progressed we continued to
search for pelagic birds with no success.
Late in the day we made our way back to the initial group of fishing
boats and threw out chum. Eventually a
few gulls joined us. Then some time later
a birder yelled – “Jaeger!”. It quickly passed
by the boat, and a few minutes later it made another pass. This was an adult bird, which I instantly
thought had a heavier body and slower wingbeats than a Parasitic. We compared notes afterwards and agreed that
this one was a Pomarine Jaeger. With no
other pelagic birds in site, we headed back to shore soon afterwards.
With respect to numbers of pelagic birds, this
turned out to be my slowest ever pelagic trip. In fact it was even slower than any of the whale
watches I’ve been on. I saw just 1 Parasitic
and 1 Pomarine Jaeger, 1 Cory’s Shearwater, and about 10 Gannets. Though with a new RI statebird I’m not
complaining.
Pomarine Jaeger was RI statebird number 315
for me, and my eight state for this species (see my statebird map below). This was statebird number 1,985 in New
England - I’m closing in on my goal of 2,000.
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