Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     This past weekend I went on my second 24-hour pelagic this summer aboard the American Star out of Cape May, NJ.  Last year’s August trip yielded New Jersey’s first record of Bermuda petrel .  I missed that voyage, so I signed up for this one soon after it became available.  I entertained the thought of seeing my first Bermuda petrel but did not set my hopes high.  My more realistic hopes were to see a long-tailed jaeger and/or white-faced storm-petrel .  Both of these birds were also seen last August and were missing from my personal State list. We left the dock at 9 p.m. and made it out to deep water (over 6,000 feet deep), approximately 100 miles offshore, before sunrise.   Wilson’s and band-rumped storm-petrels were the first birds to appear in the dawn light.  Soon after sunrise a bird was spotted out over the horizon.  As it came closer it was apparent it was a jaeger.  It never made it close to the boat before it...

     This weekend my wife and I ventured to Rhode Island to assist our daughter and her fiancé move from one apartment to another.  After a day and a half of traveling and moving boxes and furniture, I was given a day off to go out and explore on my own.  All the eBird hotspots in my daughter’s new home county were better than a half hour drive from her new apartment.  The Rhode Island birding GroupMe  alerts, which had been pinging virtually everyday for weeks, were silent since I left for th Ocean state.  So I chose to go to Beavertail State Park in nearby Jamestown, a place I visited my last time in the state.  Beavertail Lighthouse.   © S. Weiss A sign posted near the lighthouse claims this to be the third oldest lighthouse in the United States.  The shape of the island where the lighthouse is located is how it got its name. Beavertail SP is in Jamestown, on Conanicut Island, surrounded by Narragansett Bay,  between the ico...

     About two weeks ago I joined my friend on his boat for a fishing trip targeting yellowfin tuna.  We left his dock around 11:30 on a Tuesday night to head out of Barnegat Inlet and made our way out about 90 or so miles.  We didn’t make it back to his dock until around 7:30 Wednesday night.  We reached the fishing grounds at 3:30 in the morning and spent several hours trolling and searching for tuna.  Despite the captain’s efforts, the tuna were not interested in anything we offered.  From the conversations I heard over the boat’s radio, very few of the other vessels out there had any better luck. I, unlike others on the boat, am a nature enthusiast and found some consolation despite the lack of tuna.  After the sun rose, there was plenty of marine life across the fishing grounds.  Whales, dolphins and birds were feeding all around us, which made the lack of tuna perplexing.  Most of the birds were Wilson’s storm-petrels , flutte...