Back on Saturday morning, as the sun crested Great Island in Yarmouth, more than 60 birders assembled in Hyannis Harbor, ready to head out to sea. Their binoculars were polished, their camera batteries charged, their foul weather gear donned. Visions of fish-gut chum danced in their heads. These people were ready to brave whatever the ocean threw at them for a chance to see some rare birds of the cold winter ocean, for this was the Brookline Bird Club’s annual winter pelagic birding trip.
An offshore trip in December is a gamble at best, but their prayers were answered – the day called for little wind and temperatures north of 40 degrees. The plan was to head east over the often-productive Nantucket Shoals then out as far as the Great South Channel before veering back north, then west past the bird-rich waters of Monomoy on the way back to port. The first legs were characterized by the big nearshore concentrations of sea ducks – over 1000 Long-tailed Ducks in one 30-minute stretch, five thousand Black Scoters on the next. But the real duck show would be later.
The further you get from land, the fewer birds there are. Out on the shoals, the hordes of ducks gave way to much smaller numbers of more offshore fare – a few Great and Manx Shearwaters, common relatives of puffins called Razorbills, and small, attractive gulls of open ocean called Black-legged Kittiwakes. No premium-level birds yet, but the day was young. Further east, the first of the target birds was spotted – a Northern Fulmar. This stocky seabird looks like a cross between a gull and a shearwater and stays well out over cold ocean water, coming ashore only to nest on far northern cliffs. While occasionally seen from land on Cape, usually in a storm, a winter boat trip is the best way to find them.
Further east still they found a real crowd pleaser – an Atlantic Puffin. While people know them as a nesting bird of rocky Maine Islands in summer, small numbers winter in deep Massachusetts waters. These winter puffins aren’t so gaudy as they are in summer - their cereal-box good looks fade, replaced by smaller, grayer bills and dusky faces. But no one was complaining – you take any opportunity you can to see puffins in Massachusetts.
Next came the kind of breathless excitement you hope punctuates the hours of inevitable boredom typical of these long offshore trips. The kind with shouting followed by a shuffling of positions on the deck, then the machine gun cadence of a few dozen expensive cameras all firing at once. They had initially come upon a grim scene – a dead, floating minke whale attended by dozens of Northern Fulmars. Then someone yelled “skua”. The bird didn’t stay long, but photos later showed it was a rare Great Skua, a species seldom documented in state waters. These big, brown brutes steal fish from gulls and even huge gannets. It was especially sweet given recent population declines in the big skua colonies of the North Atlantic, ravaged by avian influenza.
The trip had its marquee bird – everything else was gravy. As they swung north, then back west, they continued to rack up puffins, fulmars, Dovekies, and kittiwakes. Some late Sooty Shearwaters, which should be well south of the equator by now, plus a few Pomarine Jaegers and Common Murres, rounded out the highlights.
As they passed through the productive waters off Monomoy, the great masses of ducks reappeared- 18,000 Common Eiders here, more than 2000 Surf Scoters over there – all feeding on shellfish somewhere below.
All told, they saw nearly 20 puffins, 50 Dovekies, over 200 fulmars, and 40,000 sea ducks, and earned the guaranteed birder bragging rights that come with seeing a Great Skua, all while avoiding the freezing, snotty mess that winter boating can bring. It’s enough to make me break out my long-expired dramamine, put aside the bad memories of hanging over the rail on past trips, and sign up for the next one. That should guarantee 8 foot swells and freezing rain for that trip.
