The great thing about birding is the way it takes you to places you would otherwise never go. I would not have spent time at the sprawling garbage dump in Brownsville, Texas if I hadn’t been pursuing the Tamalpius crow. I became intimitely acquainted with the Mississippi River lock-and-dam system on an unsuccessful quest for a Ross’s gull. Only the prospect of seeing all three species of rosyfinches together got me up at dawn to visit a bird feeder at 11,000 feet elevation above Albuquerque, N.M. last spring.
In September, I met a friend on the docks near San Diego, Calif. in pursuit of the elusive Craveri’s murrelet. This diminutive relative of the puffin nests under rocks on islands near the coast of Mexico. After breeding, pairs venture northward to enjoy the abundant krill in cool water upwellings near the Channel Islands, regularly straying as far north as San Diego.
Our boat was full of cheerful, optimistic birders as we eased past the tuna boats coming in with their night’s haul. It took several hours to get past the Channel Islands to the waters that attract krill, whales and birds. On the way, we got quick looks at some shearwaters, gulls, terns and jaegers, as well as curious dolphins and a huge marlin that jumped clear of the water repeatedly. Numbers and diversity were low. The ocean was not as cold as hoped, so the krill were sparse. There were no whales to be found. Spirits flagged as birdless seas spread out before us.
After six hours we finally located some distant large flocks of thousands of storm petrels, suggesting that we were in the right area for seabirds. We tossed popcorn overboard, spiked with cod liver oil, in an unsuccessful attempt to lure the flocks into view. We tried to navigate closer to the flocks but they seemed to vanish as soon as we headed in their direction.
After 10 hours most people had fallen asleep, some were nauseous and curled up in fetal positions, and a few were staring blankly at their shoes. I gave up my prime spotting position hanging off the bow of the boat to get a snack out of my backpack. When I returned, my friend gave me a “Remind me why we are doing this” look.
It was nice to be on the sea all day, but what a lot of effort and expense this had been. I elbowed my way back into the harpooner position and began scanning the horizon with binoculars, as I had been all day. The taste of failure was starting to form in my throat. I looked ahead to start another scan with my binoculars, and there, just 50 yards in front of the boat, two black and white birds were bobbing in the waves. I screamed out something and got my binoculars on the two birds as they took flight. Were they Craveri’s, scripps or Guadelupe murrelets? I could see dark underwings, there was no white near the eye, they were too big and dark to be auklets … I shouted again and pointed to the shapes skittering over the horizon.
The 10 people nearest to me all agreed these had been Craveri’s murrelets, literally in the 11th hour. The next closest 10 people were aware of our sighting but never saw the birds. No one else on the boat even knew what they had missed. Had I taken longer pulling the apple out of my backpack I would have missed it too. We cruised back in along the Mexican border as the sun set. Once again, birding had taken me to a part of the planet I would never have visited.
Cristol teaches in the Biology Department at the College of William and Mary and can be contacted at dacris@wm.edu. To discover local birding opportunities visit williamsburgbirdclub.org/
