[obol] Boiler Bay - Black-vented

[Phil Pickering]

apologies if this shows up multiple times

7:15-8:30 (11/6):
sunny, calm, 2-4 foot swells

400+ Red-throated Loons 
4000+ Pacific Loons (continuous widely-dispersed 30-90/minute)
100+ Common Loons
1 Red-necked Grebe
50 Western Grebes
50+ Northern Fulmars (feeding, N)
1 BLACK-VENTED SHEARWATER (extended point-blank look*)
1 Short-tailed Shearwater
20 Sooty Shearwaters 
300+ Sooty/Short-tailed (N, apparently mostly Sooty)
150 Brown Pelicans (feeding N)
8 Double-crested Cormorants
300 Brandt's Cormorants (N)
2 Pelagic Cormorants
4 Mallards
45 scaup sp.
1 Long-tailed Duck
2 Black Scoters
300 White-winged Scoters (most N)
2500 Surf Scoters (most S)
16 Bufflehead
3 Red-breasted Mergansers
1 Bonaparte's Gull
50 Mew Gulls
20 California Gulls
80 Western Gulls
30 Glaucous-winged Gulls
15 Heermann's Gulls
3 Black-legged Kittiwakes
8000+ Common Murres (steady S, densest in first 1/2 hour)
1 Pigeon Guillemot
4 Marbled Murrelets
20 Ancient Murrlets (most on the water)
60 Rhinoceros Auklets (most S)

*Manx-size shearwater north by itself @ ~300-400 yards. Flight
relatively direct with some minor banking, with alternating glides and
rapid fluttery wingbeats. Upperparts/face all dark gray-brown,
darkest on primaries. Belly bright white but breast/throat appeared 
entirely smudgy gray-brown creating semi-hooded look. Undertail
and UT coverts dark gray-brown. Wide dark area on flanks behind
wings extending down to meet dark UT coverts forming distinct U-
shaped border between dark/white on the trailing underparts.
Underwing coverts mostly bright white bordered by thin dark leading
edge and dark under-primaries and secondaries. White on central
underwing broken by thin dark axillary bars. As far as could be
detected bill/feet appeared all-dark. Feet held extending slightly
beyond tail.

Phil
philliplc at charter.net