Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     In mid-August I went on two whale watching excursions in New England, one out of Plymouth, MA and one out of Narragansett, RI.  I saw dozens of humpback whales over the two days and submitted tail photos of some of those individuals.  From my photos, the folks at Happywhale identified four individuals:   Farfalle , Sanchal , Lever and HW-MN0104020 .   Farfalle, Sanchal and Lever were spotted at Stellwagen Bank near Cape Cod on August 14.  HW-MN0104020 was spotted near the offshore wind farm off Rhode Island on August 15.  Farfalle (sex unknown) is at least ten years old.  It was first spotted on July 31, 2016 at Stellwagen. Farfalle, a.k.a. NA-11314, HW-MN0100150 and GOM-Farfalle.    © S. Weiss Sanchal, a female, is at least 11 years old.  She was first recorded on March 4, 2015 at Silver Bank off the Dominican Republic.  Silver Bank, like Stellwagen, is a protected marine sanctuary.  It is a winter ga...

     After spending a good day whale watching at Stellwagen Bank off of Plymouth, MA, I took another trip the following day.  This time I went a different route and took a boat sailing out of Narragansett, RI.  Since my son-in-law was spending the day with my younger daughter at the Island Rhodes Music Festival , I spent the day with his wife, my eldest daughter.  She has been kind of a good luck charm on the couple of whale trips we’ve taken together.  I did not know where this boat would be targeting whales.   Since the whole excursion would be about four hours, a run around Cape Cod to Stellwagen Bank was not on the captain’s agenda.  We left the dock from the Port of Galilee at 1 p.m. and headed out south of Block Island.  On the way out, I was noticing occasional great shearwaters flying over the water.  As we continued pushing toward our destination, the shear water activity picked up and mixed in with the greats were a few s...