Brookline Bird Club's August overnight-pelagic trip to Hydrographer Canyon,
120 miles off the Cape Cod, on the very edge of the continental shelf was
great fun. I rate the trip five stars for wildlife. Three stars for food
and accommodations. Participants, about 50 (plus half a dozen spotters),
came from all over the US principally to see white-rumped storm petrels,
which nest (among other remote islands worldwide) in the eastern North
Atlantic on off the coast of Spain and North Africa and are so rare in US
waters that *Sibley's *first edition didn't list them—the second edition
does. We had four.

If interested, book earlier, about a year in advance. Go to the Brookline
Bird Club's website and scroll to trips. There's a long waiting list, but
many people who initially made the passenger list cancel, which was how my
sister-in-law and I got on the boat. Since there are only 38 bunks, we
slept out on the upper deck. Weather cooperated, but the seas didn't. We
rocked the night away and had *very* little sleep. But I'd gladly sacrifice
a night's sleep for a whale shark and 4 white-faced storm petrels.

Our full list below.

August 20, 2016:


*Nantucket Shoals*: herring gull, Bonapart's gull, great black-backed gull,
lesser black-backed gull, common tern, roseate tern, Forster's tern,
Wilson's storm petrel, Cory's shearwater, great shearwater, Manx
shearwater, sooty shearwater, long-tailed jaeger, parasitic jaeger,
red-necked phalarope

*Off continental shelf (edge of the Gulf Stream)*: Wilson's storm petrel,
Leach's storm petrel, white-faced storm petrel, band-rumped storm petrel,
black-capped petrel, Audubon's shearwater, great shearwater, Manx
shearwater, sooty shearwater, Cory's shearwater, tree swallow (forlorn &
lost), red phalarope, whimbrel (migratory flock),

*Mammals*: bottle-nosed dolphin (50+ with calves), Risso's dolphin, fin
whale, minke whale, beaked whale (species unknown)

*Miscellaneous*: leatherback sea turtle, sea turtle (either loggerhead or
green), whale shark (awesome; stayed by the boat for half an hour at
sunset), manta ray, remora (attached to whale shark), green flash (really)


August 21, 2016

*Off continental shelf*: common tern, Cory' shearwater, great shearwater,
Manx shearwater, sooty shearwater, Audubon's shearwater, Wilson's storm
petrel, Leach's Storm petrel, band-rumped storm petrel, white-rumped storm
petrel, pectoral sandpiper (2 migrating)

*Mammals*: common porpoise, bottle-nosed porpoise, Risso's porpoise

*Miscellaneous*: flying fish (species unknown four- or five-inch wingspan;
gray like little sandpipers)

*Nantucket Shoals*: long-tailed jaeger (juvenile), Cory's shearwater, great
shearwater, Manx shearwater, Wilson' Storm petrel, Leach's Storm petrel,
herring gull


Sent from my iPhone


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