A Different Kind of Day on the Bay

We went out again at 7:30 AM, but today was about as different as it could be from yesterday. Instead of a mostly bright blue sky day, we began with fog which stayed with us until early afternoon. As a result, our chumming effort was not all that successful because the birds could not see the boat, so when we lost the gulls that followed us out of the harbor, we did not have the magnet they provide to other birds. As a result while we saw most of the same birds as on Thursday, there were far fewer of them, and they were much harder to pick up in the foggy conditions.

We did have one very entertaining and educational 30 minutes while we watched a humpback whale feeding very near our boat. The top photo is of the back of the whale. The middle photo is a shot of the whale slapping its pectoral fins on the water as part of its feeding maneuvers . The bottom photo is of the whale breaching during its feeding process--remember to click on photos to enlarge. We watched its feeding routine thru several cycles.

After getting off the boat, Wes and I spent about 90 minutes retracing our land birding steps of yesterday. We also found most of the same birds as on Thursday but nothing special to add to the year list. So 59 birds were seen to start week #37, but no new year birds were found. Tomorrow I will be out on Monterey Bay one more time. Maybe we will find something special like a cook's petrel. Stay tuned!