Sooty Shearwater, Rhode Island, July 2013

Pelagic birding represents one of my single best opportunities to add statebirds to my RI list.  That’s mostly because real pelagic birding has mostly been out of reach for me.  Although a group of RI birders organize a few pelagic trips into RI waters each year, my schedule has never allowed me to go on one (though I signed up for a pelagic in March this year that got cancelled).  As a result, my pelagic birding efforts have been restricted to a few ferry rides on the Block Island Ferry out of Galilee, plus several hours of seawatches from places like Point Judith.  Although there is always potential for pelagics from these near-shore locations, the best birds are typically south of Block Island.  Despite these limited opportunities, I’ve developed a pretty good list of RI pelagics over the years like 3 shearwaters (Great, Manx, Cory’s), both Wilson’s and Leach’s Storm-Petrels, Parasitic Jaeger, Kittiwake, Razorbill, and Common Murre. 

A key bird missing from my RI pelagic list is Sooty Shearwater, which is a reasonably common shearwater, especially in mid-summer.  A couple recent pelagics out of Chatham, MA had over 1,500 Sootys, so I decided to take another Block Island Ferry ride to give it a try in nearby RI waters.  With good weather and reasonably calm seas, I headed out on an early July day with much optimism.  But all I could find was 3 Wilson’s Storm-Petrels - though a fly-by flock of 5 Knots was a nice consolation.  That evening I checked the reports and was shocked to see that a group of birders went on a whale watch trip out of Galilee that same afternoon and had all 4 shearwaters and Pomarine Jaegers.  I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even know that a whale watch existed out of RI!  With a little web research I found the boat company which runs 4 or 5 afternoon whale watches each week in summer, and the next trip was the very next day.  So I decided to give it a try – putting me on the water 2 days in a row off the RI coast. 

I arrived at the dock early that next day to beat the beach traffic.  As the departure time approached I was surprised to see 7 other birders on the boat – all local RI birders.  The more eyes the better!  We motored to an area southeast of Block Island where the birding and whales are best, though whales are still a pretty rare site.  And sure enough, when we arrived in the area where the shearwaters were seen the previous day, we started to see some activity.  First was a fly-by Great Shearwater, then a Sooty Shearwater sitting on the water.  Success!  We ended up seeing 5-10 Sooty, Great, and Cory’s, plus 1 Wilson’s Storm-Petrel, all within a pretty small area.  I was told this was typical for RI waters.  So although this is certainly nothing like Stellwagen Bank, it’s the place for pelagics in RI.  A couple marginal photos of one of the Sooty’s are inserted below.

And we even had a humpback whale on the trip – the first whale of any type from the boat for several years.  That is unfortunate since we all would have received a voucher for a free trip on the boat if no whales were seen.  It put on quite a show logging and diving right next to the boat.

Now that I know that the whale watch exists, I’m hoping to head back out there in late summer and early fall to try for some of the rarer pelagics.  Nice to expand my birding horizons in RI. 

Sooty Shearwater was #306 for my RI list.  As shown on my statebird map, I’ve seen this species in 4 New England states (ME, NH, MA, and RI), and all the Pacific coast states.  Haven’t done much in the way of pelagic birding elsewhere on the east coast so I need virtually all the shearwaters in the remaining Atlantic coast states.