Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     This past Sunday I joined my friend Captain John on another tuna fishing adventure.  We did slightly better this time than our previous trip.  We boated one yellowfin tuna on Sunday whereas we were skunked the previous Monday.  There were plenty of Wilson’s storm-petrels around, but no tuna.  What we needed to find out on the water was a more communal feeding event, such as one that also includes shearwaters, whales and dolphins.  Tuna would certainly be in the area.  There were no such feeding frenzies in the areas that we covered.  The marine life in general on Sunday was slower than the past few trips.  We saw only one distant whale and just a few dolphins.  Other than plenty of storm-petrels, I was able to pick up just a couple great shearwaters and several Cory’s shearwaters . Left, great shearwater.  Right, Cory’s shearwater .   © S. Weiss Five Cory’s shearwaters sitting on water.   © S. Weiss In m...

     On Monday I joined my friend, Captain John, on another tuna fishing trip.  The previous week we went out to the Hudson Canyon and did well with bluefin tuna.  This time we only went out about 40 - 50 miles to target yellowfin tuna.  The captain had good intelligence that the tuna bite was hot there the day before.  We left the dock at 4 a.m., but it took us longer than expected to reach our destination due to the thick fog.  It was a little dicey navigating through Barnegat Inlet out to the open ocean, but Captain John handled it well.  The foggy conditions lifted by the time we made it to the fishing grounds.  Apparently, others had similar reports as there were dozens of boats in the area. We fished the area into the afternoon but could not put a fish in the boat.  We saw only a handful of fish caught among all the vessels out on the water.  Despite the captain’s efforts, it turned into one of those “ you should have bee...

     My wife and I took my daughter for a long weekend to Disney as part of her 30th birthday celebration.  She has never outgrown the Disney experience since her first trip when she was four years old.  I don’t mind the trip there either.  I like the resort we stay at, and Florida is always good for birding and other nature sightings.  As a matter of fact, I could produce a nice list of wildlife sightings over the years for Disney property alone.  The only problem for this trip was that it was hot.  We knew at the beginning of the booking process that it would be hot in central Florida in June, but this time it was oppressive.  We dealt with it because it just happened to be equally as hot back at home too.   I did incidental birding for three of the four days while I was with the family.  I had one day to myself, and that is when I ventured over to nearby Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive.  Over the four days I did not pick up ...

     I got to spend Father’s Day tuna fishing on my friend’s boat.  I like tuna trips because they combine two of my favorite activities, fishing and pelagic birding.  Usually, to get these sleek, powerful fish we have to get out to one of the canyon fishing grounds and start before daybreak.  At the shelf where the ocean floor drops from a couple hundred feet to a couple thousand feet deep, the water temperature also rises.  That is where many pelagic game fish gather, as well as birds and other sea life.  We spent most of the day trolling for tuna.  We scored two yellowfin tuna, and saw a good sample of marine life. The bird life was slower than I expected.  The morning hours produced only Wilson’s storm-petrels and some great shearwaters .  I really was hoping to spot Leach’s or band-rumped storm-petrels , jaegers or even a black-capped petrel , but none were around.  Chumming might have helped bring in some of those bird...

     My fishing captain friend invited me out for his second day of a sea bass tournament on Sunday.  It was my first opportunity of the year to get out on the water, catch some fish and see some sea birds.  It turned out to be a good day for fishing for all of us on board and a good first day of sea birding for me.  We left the dock at five a.m. and headed out of Barnegat Inlet.  We had fog all day, ranging from thick to about a mile of visibility, but the seas were calm.  We made it to the first fishing spot around six a.m. and the fishing started out with a bang.  It would slow as the day progressed and as we hopped around to other spots.  We happily had our limit of sea bass and added some ling , or red hake , to our bounty.   Birds were scarce for most of the day, maybe because of the fog conditions, or maybe because we were not chumming.  Early on though we had some Wilson’s storm-petrels flying around, making their skip...