Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     This past Sunday my friend, Captain John, invited me back on his boat for a day of tuna fishing.  While tuna was his target, and I love deep sea fishing as well, I really was hoping to finally find some pelagic birds on the trip.  This day would be the 1,500th consecutive day submitting an eBird checklist and I wanted it to be memorable.  The only reason I am aware of this streak is because my eBird homepage reminds me every day with that stat prominently displayed on the top banner.  Submitting at least one checklist a day sounds easy, since I can list any bird that comes to my backyard feeders.  But I can see how life can get in the way for many people, COVID being one reason.  Lucky for me, I have been able to report at least one bird each day for over four years. The previous two tuna trips provided little in pelagic bird diversity, with only great shearwaters, Wilson’s storm-petrels and a few Cory’s shearwaters to report.  Bein...

 This past weekend my friend, Captain John, invited me on another fishing trip for tuna.  Based on the successful trip we had two weeks ago; I was excited for another day out on the ocean.  The offshore weather forecast for Sunday called for light winds and two-foot seas meant a smooth and quicker ride.  The fishing reports indicated that schools of larger yellowfin tuna, in the 80-pound range, and bigeye tuna, which run twice that size, had moved into the area.  The weather forecast, the fishing reports and my own hopes of seeing some summer pelagic birds, had my anticipation levels heightened. We left the dock by 1:30 a.m. and headed northeast out of Barnegat Inlet.  We arrived at the fishing grounds just before sunrise and the seas were light as had been forecasted.  However, we would spend about the next six hours searching for tuna.  The closest thing we caught was a false albacore .  False albacores are not considered tasty.  It is...