We’ve been dealing with hurricanes the last few years, but had wonderful stretch of calm seas around this year’s pelagic trip from Bar Harbor. It was a beautiful sunny day aboard Bar Harbor Whale Watch’s Friendship V, a 112 foot a jet-powered catamaran. Perhaps the best nautical forecast we’ve ever seen on this trip, with seas “less than one foot.” The wind was also calm, ~5 mph from the south, which was less than desired for birds that like a breeze, but made for a glassy smooth day of cruising. We motored out of Bar Harbor towards ‘the ballpark’ before heading east to ‘the bumps’ and into Canadian waters to reach ‘southwest bank.’
This was a low-quantity, high quality year. Skuas are our target on this trip, and we did find one adult South Polar Skua in Canadian waters. There unfortunately still haven’t been any [documented] records of Great Skua in the Gulf of Maine since 2021 (since avian influenza hit their nesting colonies). We encountered both expected flavors of storm-petrels and phalaropes, though numbers were below average. We had a jaeger hat-trick this year, highlighted by three Long-tailed Jaegers, a species we’ve only seen four previous times on this trip, and not since 2011. A Forster’s Tern was new for the trip but unfortunately only seen by a few people as it zipped past while we were traveling at full speed (30kts). The biggest surprise was the lack of shearwaters: we typically see hundreds on this trip (Great Shearwater average since 1997 = 660) but we only had a couple Greats and a single Manx. Lastly, but not least, actually lesser: Lesser Black-backed Gulls continue their spike in abundance. We used to see one or two on this trip, around 2014 we started seeing 5-7, then in 2022 we had 25+, and 33 individuals were tallied this year!
Many thanks to Jan Pierson and Zack Klyver for narrating, Robby Lambert for chumming, and our volunteer guides helping get people on birds throughout the trip!
Trip List
Birds:
Common Eider – 5
Surf Scoter – 6
Red Phalarope – 1
Red-necked Phalarope – 22
Long-tailed Jaeger – 3
Parasitic Jaeger – 4
Pomarine Jaeger – 13
South Polar Skua – 1
Atlantic Puffin – 94
Black Guillemot – 6
Razorbill – 10
Black-legged Kittiwake – 1
Laughing Gull – 1
Ring-billed Gull – 166
Herring Gull – 131
Great Black-backed Gull – 93
Lesser Black-backed Gull – 33
Forster’s Tern – 1
Common Tern – 14
Common Loon – 3
Wilson’s Storm-Petrel – 132
Leach’s Storm-Petrel – 2
Great Shearwater – 2
Manx Shearwater – 1
Northern Gannet – 457
Double-crested Cormorant – 58
Northern Harrier – 3
Bald Eagle – 1
American Kestrel – 2
Merlin – 3
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher – 1
Northern Waterthrush – 1
Mourning Warbler – 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler – 1
Scarlet Tanager – 1
ADDITIONAL TAXA
Red/Red-necked Phalarope – 48
shorebird sp. – 2
jaeger sp. – 12
large alcid sp. – 6
gull sp. – 200
tern sp. – 4
diurnal raptor sp. – 2
passerine sp. – 5
Mammals:
Atlantic White-sided Dolphin
Harbor Porpoise
Short-beaked Common Dolphin
Long-fined Pilot Whale
Minke Whale
Fin Whale
Humpback Whale
Harbor Seal
Gray Seal
Fish:
Blue Shark
Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola)
Atlantic Bluefin Tuna
eBird Checklists
Segmented checklists were kept throughout the trip to put species in representative habitats. Thanks to Luke Seitz for tallying birds as we went! You can click the green “view” links to see each list, or if you were on the trip you can click the red “Add to my eBird” link to automatically add these lists to your eBird account.
Maine Audubon Pelagic 2024–Frenchman Bay to Ballpark – View – Add to my eBird
Maine Audubon Pelagic 2024–Ballpark to Bumps area – View – Add to my eBird
Maine Audubon Pelagic 2024–Bumps area – View – Add to my eBird
Maine Audubon Pelagic 2024–SW Bank approach – View – Add to my eBird
Maine Audubon Pelagic 2024–SW Bank and transit out – View – Add to my eBird
Maine Audubon Pelagic 2024–south of Petit Manan into Frenchman Bay – View – Add to my eBird
