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I made my first pelagic birdwatching trip in September 1978. Our scheduled trip from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina was blown out by a hurricane so we scurried down to Wilmington, North Carolina and got on a deep sea fishing boat. We made it to the Gulf Stream where I saw five species of seabirds (Wilson's Storm-Petrel, Great Shearwater, Cory's Shearwater, Audubon's Shearwater, and Bridled Tern) and I was hooked on pelagic birds and birding.
Since that first trip I have spent more than 300 days on the ocean looking for birds. My first overnight trip was a 10-day excursion with Chris Haney aboard the University of Georgia's research vessel the M/V Bulldog. We assisted a fisheries biologist studying tilefish, and Chris and I counted seabirds as part of his PhD research.
In subsequent trips I have traveled from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean to Australia, to Fiji to Chile and north in the Pacific Ocean to Alaska. In the Atlantic I have looked for seabirds in the Southern Ocean at Antarctica, the Atlantic Ocean from the Falkland Islands to South Africa, to the Canary Islands. In the Mediterranean Sea. In the Baltic Sea (Sweden to Finland and Finland to Estonia) and in the North Atlantic in Iceland. The Arctic Ocean is the only one of the world's major oceans that I have not been out on looking for seabirds although I have watched them from shore at Barrow, Alaska.
Cathy and I have done two Transatlantic crossings on cruise ships. One from Denmark to Miami, and the other from Barcelona to Port Canaveral, Florida. I always chuckle on deck when we are in the middle of the ocean and someone points at my binoculars,, making a snide remark about looking for birds on the ocean. Then a shearwater flies by and I show it to them and they say "I had no idea."
In the past I have hauled with me bird books for whatever nations I will be visiting to get an idea of which pelagic species are possible to find. Some times I think I am going to exceed the weight limit of my checked baggage by the airlines just from my bird books. That issue was recently solved when I discovered "Oceanic Birds of the World - A Photo Guide" by Steve N.G. Howell and Kirk Zuefelt. This 360 page gem is crammed full of images of every known species of seabird anywhere in the world. Also for some species like Wandering Albatross there are images showing the progression of plumage change over the period from being juveniles to becoming adults. Many birds that have not yet been split by taxonomists are also included along with information about their known or suspected ranges.
We have a 16 day cruise coming up in late April and early May that takes us from a week among the Hawaiian islands then five days north over open Pacific Ocean to Southeast Alaska then down the inside passage to Vancouver, British Columbia. In late October and early November this year we are on a 21-day cruise from Seattle to the Panama Canal, to Cartagena, Colombia and then to Miami. I think with the discovery of this excellent book on the pelagic birds of the world I will only have to bring one bird book along with me on these and future pelagic adventure.
