News
Email
Print
Take to the sea for birds who rarely come ashore
Patrick Coin/Wikipedia Photo
A Wilson's storm petrel is seen off of Hatteras. it lives on the open ocean.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: July 1, 2008
The boat pitched and rolled in 6-foot seas under dense clouds. The bow rose on a large swell, then fell hard and a strong wind carried the splash across several birders sitting along the gunwale benches in front of the cabin. After getting soaked a couple of times, we scampered leeward where the cabin offered more protection from wind and spray. The temperature climbed to the low 70s later in the day, but at 8 a.m. it was still quite chilly -- and getting drenched seemed like a bad idea.
The 61-foot Stormy Petrel II is owned and operated by Brian Patteson of Hatteras Island. It serves mainly as a fishing charter, like many such boats along the North Carolina coast, but 45 to 50 days a year, the boat's passengers are birders, who are looking for a different sort of bird.
"The close proximity," Brian said, "of both the warm Gulf Stream current and the edge of the Continental Shelf inshore, as well as the influence of the cooler Labrador Current make Hatteras waters a dynamic environment which attracts a remarkable diversity of seabirds throughout the year."
Talk about an ocean view
There are many kinds of seabirds -- gulls, terns, pelicans, cormorants and certain species of ducks to name a few. But the birders aboard the Stormy Petrel II were in search of pelagic birds -- birds that live on or in the open ocean rather than the beaches and inshore waters. These birds come to land only during the breeding season when they lay their eggs, usually only one per pair, incubate and hatch them, and then rear the nestlings over the course of a few weeks. For the rest of the year, these birds stay out on the ocean around the clock: day after day, week after week, month after month. Penguins and puffins are pelagic birds, but the ones we were in search of are a group of birds known as tubenoses.
Most birds have little in the way of a sense of smell, relying more on hearing and vision. But tubenoses have a keen sense of smell. This helps them find their food in an environment that has few if any visual or aural cues to rely on.
Brian's first mate Kate takes a gallon of fish oil, secures it to a short line, punches a few holes in the plastic jug and lowers it just into the water off the stern. We are moving along at idling speed now and the fish oil seeps out of the jug and floats to the surface -- a biodegradable slick a few yards wide trailing the boat.
After a half-hour, the first birds begin to appear. About 10 Wilson's storm petrels flutter above the slick, floating in the air just above the surface of the water.
An hour later, the numbers grew to 150. Storm petrels feed mainly on plankton -- tiny shrimp and other small marine animals that float along on the currents.
The pattering they do brings more of these organisms up to the surface where the birds can snatch them up. Yellow webs between the tiny toes of the Wilson's storm petrel may even lure some of these organisms into the striking range of the birds.
We also saw sooty, greater, Audubon's and Cory's shearwaters; black-capped and Herald petrels; band-rumped and Leach's storm petrels; a masked booby; and Northern gannets. The gannet was the largest bird we saw, with a wing span of 6 feet.
Some of these birds are far rarer than Wilson's storm petrel, which may indeed be one of the most abundant birds in the world.
But this was the first time I have seen one, and I am enchanted by this fragile little bird that lives in such a hostile environment. At just over an ounce in weight, it is slightly larger than a house sparrow. And yet it spends most of its life floating on or just above the waves of the most tempestuous seas. They flit off the stern with their butterfly flight, almost within reach, dozens of them so close that they can be watched for hours even without binoculars.
For information on boating trips to see pelagic seabirds, go to Patteson's Web site at www.seabirding.com.
■ Bird's-Eye View is joint column by Ron Morris and Phil Dickinson. Today's column was written by Morris. Morris retired after 24 years as curator at the N.C. Zoo. He has studied birds on four continents, 22 countries and many islands. Dickinson is a legal writer. He has been an active birder for 15 years, and is currently president of the Audubon Society of Forsyth County. If you have a birding question or story idea, write to Bird's-Eye View in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, N.C. 27101-3159, or send an e-mail to birding@wsjournal.com. Please type "birds" in the subject line.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
N.C. Politics
Federal Politics
Advertisement
