The Hatteras Special

 

Way back in January, I had my first chance to go on a proper pelagic birding trip out of Maryland. As it turns out, winter pelagic birding is mostly getting bounced around on high seas while being splashed by freezing water and stray fish guts, interspersed with brief moments of birding. Still, between the community aspect and the ever-present chance of seeing some truly rare birds that would virtually never be seen from land, it was easy to understand why pelagics are addictive for so many people. 

On that trip, I ran into fellow DC birders Andy and Vikas, and although our experiences at sea were... mixed, we all agreed that this was the sort of thing we wanted to do again, possibly at a time of year when we'd be able to feel our extremities by the end of the trip. The obvious choice for this was to do a Seabirding pelagic out of Cape Hatteras, and we signed up for a trip on May 19, one of the last springtime trips that still had enough vacancy for the three of us. 

Cape Hatteras is essentially synonymous with pelagic birding on the East Coast, and for good reason. Geographically speaking its location on the far eastern tip of North Carolina's Outer Banks makes it the nearest point on land to the Atlantic continental shelf. That means that it only takes 4-5 hours of motoring to get out to the Gulf Stream and the properly deep water that pelagic birds prefer (pelagics out of New York or elsewhere require an overnight trip in order to get to the right depth). Geography aside, the other reason is that Brian Patteson and Kate Sutherland of Seabirding are legends in the pelagic birding community- some of the best-known experts on tubenoses and general ocean birds in the Atlantic, and arguably worldwide. Doing a Cape Hatteras pelagic is something of a rite of passage for American birders (especially those of us living east of the Mississippi), so obviously I was excited. 

After returning from the Philippines, I had barely three days at home to rest and unpack my bags before Vikas, Andy and I left DC once again the morning of May 18 to drive down to North Carolina. The weather, unfortunately, was not in our favor that weekend. It was pouring rain for almost the entire morning as we drove south, but more concerning was the forecast for Sunday, the day of the pelagic. There wasn't much rain predicted, but it did call for 25-knot winds off shore, the sort of thing that the Seabirding website said might lead to a canceled trip. We were heading southward with the full knowledge that we might go the entire way only to end up shorebound. 

The first part of the drive through the northern Outer Banks was, unfortunately, more depressing than I'd expected. The Banks are one of the most unique and interesting habitats in eastern North America, but these days much of it is a wasteland of strip malls, kitschy tourist trap shops, and overpriced vacation homes. In addition to being an aesthetic nightmare, the uncontrolled development and associated loss of native vegetation is causing the barrier islands to erode into the sea, making them even more vulnerable to hurricanes and sea level rise. It wasn't until we got further south to where the seashore is protected by some of North Carolina's many excellent National Wildlife Refuges that we began to see more of the unique coastal habitat that's one of the best reasons to come to the Outer Banks.

Our first stop was at Oregon Inlet just north of Pea Island, where there had been some interesting lists on eBird recently. There was a Grey Plover and a family of Killdeer (including some adorable chicks) hanging out in the lawn of the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center, and in a little pond was a Semipalmated Sandpiper and a surprisingly accommodating Red Knot. It turned out that the Knot had an injured leg and was hopping around rather pitifully which soured the experience a bit, but it seemed to be feeding unencumbered so hopefully it somehow made it. There were lots of Laughing Gulls flying around and I was pleased to see  Boat-tailed Grackles, one of the few species endemic to the continental US and a bird I hadn't seen in years. 

Grey Plover

Baby Killdeer- in the brief cute stage before it turns into a shrieking maniac

Not the liveliest Red Knot I've ever seen

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Laughing Gull

Boat-tailed Grackle

Hairy Buttercup

Narrow-leaved Blue-eyed Grass (actually a type of iris, not a grass)

We crossed the Oregon Inlet bridge to Pea Island, and made another stop at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, located on a narrow strip of land between the coast and a set of tidal ponds. There was a host of turtles hanging out in the muddy water near the headquarters, including Pond Sliders and some enormous Common Snapping Turtles, but the main attraction was the water birds. There were lots of shorebirds hanging out in the shallow pond, including many Short-billed Dowitchers and Black-necked Stilts, a few American Avocets, and hundreds of Dunlins in their black-bellied breeding plumage. We spotted a little sandpiper with a long bill that was likely a Western Sandpiper (rare on the East Coast during spring), and there were some ducks eBird also flagged as rare, including a pair of Blue-winged Teals and a distant Redhead. Many tiny Least Terns were flying over us along with a pair of demented-looking Black Skimmers. Boat-tailed Grackles and Eastern Meadowlarks were welcome passerine distractions. 

Pond Slider- the same species as the Red-eared Slider which has been introduced worldwide thanks to the pet trade with disastrous consequences

Common Snapping Turtle

Western Sandpiper (probably)

Black-necked Stilt

Least Tern

Black Skimmer

Boat-tailed Grackle

Eastern Meadowlark

The boardwalk at Pea Island

We crossed the road to the beach side, and climbed up a little sand dune with my scope to try some seawatching. At first it was mostly just lots of Least Terns joined by Great Black-backed Gulls, Laughing Gulls, and Brown Pelicans. Fortunately, we lucked out- as we were scanning, I spotted a Sooty Shearwater flying in! It made a pass close to shore then kept heading north, and we consoled ourself with the thought that even if the next day's boat trip was canceled we had at least seen one pelagic bird. As we got back in my car I saw a Gull-billed Tern flying over, a bird that I frequently see in the Philippines but almost never in the US. 

Brown Pelican

Laughing Gull

Great Black-backed Gull

Sooty Shearwater! 

Gull-billed Tern

The coastline at Pea Island

We drove a bit south but stopped at another pond where we could see a big group of shorebirds hanging out in the shallow water. It was mostly Dunlins and Semipalmated Plovers, the latter of which we tried unsuccessfully to turn into a Common Ringed Plover. The highlight was another pair of Black Skimmers that made several passes in front of us, skimming through the water and plucking up fish. They're one of my favorite birds in North America with their striking plumage, enormous underbites, and ludicrous feeding strategy- dragging their enormous lower mandibles through the water until they happen to hit something edible. It's the sort of thing that you'd think was invented in a Loony Tunes cartoon if it didn't come from real life. 

Black Skimmer

We made another stop a ways further down to check out another beach spot, which didn't turn up anything new- lots of Sanderlings, another Gull-billed Tern, and a Grey Plover in spectacular breeding plumage, along with some cool seaside flora.

Sanderling flipping twigs

I call this a Grey Plover, but American birders usually call it a Black-bellied Plover. The former is a much more helpful term for non-breeding plumage, but when it's in crispy breeding plumage like this it is definitely a Black-bellied Plover.

Indian Blanket

Creeping Cactus (Opuntia drummondi), one of the only cacti found on the East Coast

Our last stop of the day was the creatively-named Ramp 43, one of the beach access spots in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Andy had seen some interesting eBird lists from this spot, and stopping there proved to be a very good call. Most of the beach was taken up by enormous trucks flying offensive flags of various types, but there were lots of the usual gulls and terns around including a surprise Bonaparte's Gull. We ended up running into Jamie Adams, who had just returned from the Saturday pelagic trip where they had seen a Bermuda Petrel! He tipped us off to a bunch of shorebirds in a small pond near the seashore that included several Stilt Sandpipers, Red Knots, and White-rumped Sandpipers, along with some of the more common stuff. The White-rumped Sandpipers were a photo-lifer for me and a full lifer for Vikas, so we were thrilled. As it got dark we began to hear the peent-ing of Common Nighthawks. 

White-rumped Sandpiper

Stilt Sandpiper with a Short-billed Dowitcher and White-rumped Sandpiper

The shorebird pond

Vikas and I looking at White-rumped Sandpipers

It was dark by then, so we headed to our AirBnb to check in and then got dinner at a local pizza joint. We ran into Jamie once again there, and he gave us a heads-up that the next day's pelagic was likely off thanks to the weather forecasts. That was a bit discouraging, but we'd come all the way down already so we figured that at worst we would just spend the next day seawatching and maybe get home earlier than expected. 

We were up by 4AM the next morning, and although we checked our emails and social media notifications thoroughly there was no sign the trip was canceled- success! Our AirBnb was located directly next to the docks of the Cape Hatteras Marina where we were departing, so it was only a 5-minute walk to get to the meeting point at the Stormy Petrel II, our boat for the day. The safety briefing was at 5AM, and by 5:30 we were on board the boat and motoring through the Pamlico Sound on our way to sea. As always the trip was lead by Brian (who was captaining the boat) and Kate (who was on deck pointing out birds), along with the two excellent spotters Danny and Sage. There were another 15 or so clients on board, including Ben who we had met briefly the previous day at Pea Island, and Michael and Corina, DC area birders who I'd previously only known on social media. 

It took almost an hour before we had exited the Hatteras Inlet and were heading out into the open ocean, but it would be even longer than that before we were in properly deep water; even in Cape Hatteras the continental shelf is still almost 30 miles off shore. It was a good time to get to know some of the other passengers and chat about birding before we were all focused on the birds and (for some) the seasickness kicked in. Laughing Gulls, Royal Terns, and a couple of Sandwich Terns passed by the boat as we left the coast, but the first properly exciting bird was a lone Bridled Tern that made a quick flyby, apparently the first of the year and a long-overdue lifer for me. 

Bridled Tern

As we got further out into the open ocean, the winds got stronger and the waves got bigger. The strong winds we had been expecting, but the marine weather forecast had called for waves of 5-7 feet. That may have been accurate closer to land, but by the time we were nearing the continental shelf they were getting closer to 15 feet. If the pictures in this part of the blog are lacking in quality, it's because they were taken on a tossing and bucking boat with me braced awkwardly against a railing in an effort not to be thrown into the ocean. 

The seas were rough, but that's the sort of thing that seabirds evolved to handle, and they were still out there. Tubenoses began appearing around 10 miles from shore: a Cory's Shearwater that flew by rather distantly, a few brief appearances from an Audubon's Shearwater, and the first Black-capped Petrels of the day. The latter was really the main target of the trip, at least for me. Black-capped Petrels were hunted nearly to extinction by Europeans from the 1600s onwards, and their breeding grounds were unknown until they were rediscovered in the 1960s in the high mountains of Haiti. It was only in 2011 that the first active nesting burrow was found, and fieldwork (and increasing numbers of pelagic birding outings) have confirmed that they're quite regular in the Gulf Stream waters off of the southeastern US. While their breeding grounds are now known (and more populations are strongly suspected in inaccessible areas of other islands like Cuba and Dominica), they're still under threat due to deforestation and human activity in those areas, particularly feral dogs and pigs that destroy nest burrows. They're deceptively common on the Gulf Stream, but in reality are one of the most endangered seabirds in the world. As Birds of the World puts it: 

Like most other petrels in the North Atlantic, the recent history of Black-capped Petrel is one of ebullience and disappearance, of quasi-extinction and resilience. But like no other, this enigmatic seabird links worlds and people that never meet, from the cloud forests of the Caribbean’s highest mountains to crystalline waters of the Gulf Stream, from Haitian farmers to Carolinian offshore fishermen.

By 8 in the morning we were past the shelf break and entering the Gulf Stream. The enormous northbound warm current is something I'd read about in textbooks, but I'd pictured it as an abstract thing happening below the surface of the ocean. As it turns out it's very real and tangible, and we could immediately tell when we found it: the water took on a greenish tinge and heated up quickly to almost 80 degrees. The water was hotter than the air, especially with the northerly winds that had been blowing all day, and it felt surprisingly steamy on the Stormy Petrel as if we were by an indoor swimming pool. It was easy to see how the Gulf Stream has the effects that it does on the climate of the eastern US and Western Europe. Even with the higher seas, the warmer water made this a somewhat more pleasant experience than the winter pelagic. It also helped that the chum was lowered into the water in a metal cage, a more civilized method than tossing fish guts off the boat willy-nilly and catching birders in friendly fire.

Off of Cape Hatteras is where the Gulf Stream meets the cooler waters of the southbound Labrador Current, creating a mixing of waters that makes this area a fertile fishing ground and also brings in the seabirds. And indeed, once we hit the western wall of the Gulf Stream the birds started to appear in earnest. The highlight was, without a doubt, the Black-capped Petrels. They're seen on most spring and summer pelagics, but this time they were truly out in force- we had at least 81 individual birds, the first time that year they'd been seen in such numbers. And they were showing off at that, wheeling about all around the boat, sometimes making passes just a few meters in front of our faces. It was a magical experience, and it turned them from one of my biggest targets into one of my favorite birds.

Black-capped Petrel

Along with the petrels, the storm-petrels started to appear. The vast majority of them were Wilson's Storm Petrels, which makes sense considering that they're actually one of the most abundant birds in the world. What doesn't make sense is that Wilson's Storm petrel is one of the "Austral storm petrels" (Oceanitidae), and breeds on the coast of Antarctica, far southern South America, and islands in the Great Southern Ocean. Despite this it's the most common tubenose in most of the northern hemisphere. Ludicrous travel habits aside, they were a joy to watch, hopping across the top of the water and eating the fish oil bubbling up from the chum. Early in the morning there was also a brief appearance from a Band-rumped Storm Petrel, but it flew by before I could manage any pictures. Annoyingly enough Band-rumped, along with all of the other storm petrels in the Northern Hemisphere, is in a completely different family (Hydrobatidae), and is more closely related to Black-capped Petrel than it is to Wilson's Storm Petrel. Bird taxonomy in general is weird, but for whatever reason ocean birds are particularly vexing.

Wilson's Storm Petrel

Further out in the Gulf Stream, conditions got... weird. The increasing temperature differential between the water and the air resulted in a phenomenon called "sea smoke", where water vapor started rising off the surface of the ocean and was blown about by the wind like steam. The waves also got even bigger, rising over the top of the boat. I was, somehow, feeling totally okay despite forgetting to take my seasickness medications, but it was still physically taxing to try and scan the horizon and get pictures of fast-flying birds while also bracing myself or holding onto the boat. The others onboard handled it in different ways: some huddled inside the cabin, others tried sitting on the benches, and some spent the whole time vomiting over the side. Kate and the other guides somehow possessed the superhuman ability to stand nonchalantly on the deck with no handholds, keeping their balance even while using binoculars and cameras. 

It's very hard to do justice to the weather conditions with pictures

Storm petrels frolicking in the sea smoke

The birding got better even as the weather worsened. A Leach's Storm Petrel started following the boat in the distance, never coming in close enough for pictures even though it stayed with us for almost an hour. Cory's Shearwaters and Audubon's Shearwaters made a couple of close passes even though photography in the fog was difficult, and more distantly a Pomarine Jaeger made a quick appearance. There was some excitement when a Great Shearwater appeared- the first of the year and lots of fun to watch as it dove gracefully in and out of the water, much different behavior than the other petrels and shearwaters. 

Cory's Shearwater

Audubon's Shearwater

Great Shearwater

Annoyingly enough my only picture of a Leach's Storm Petrel. No, not the in-focus Wilson's in the front, the blurry one in the back with the long wings and forked tail...

Pomarine Jaeger- still the only species of jaeger or skua I've ever seen

As we were trying to get pictures of the Great Shearwater, a shout came from the upper deck: "TRINDADE PETREL!" Danny had spotted it coming in, and suddenly everyone on the boat was rushing to try and get a look and a picture, with Kate alternating between pointing out the bird to everyone and uttering some choice 4-letter words (she also still got much better pictures than I did). Trindade Petrels nest mainly on Ilha da Trindade off of Brazil, and while they're globally more common than Black-capped Petrels they're still a rare find in North Carolina, in the opposite hemisphere from their breeding grounds. Not too many people do pelagics in Brazil, so the Hatteras pelagic is probably where they're most frequently seen by birders, but it's one of those birds everyone hopes to see on a pelagic but usually never does. Thankfully this one did a couple of full circles around the boat, showing itself off to everyone before disappearing once again into the open ocean. 

Trindade Petrel!

That was about all we had time for, as the heavy winds and high seas prevented us from going any further into the Gulf Stream. We began to motor back, slowing down briefly for a Sooty Shearwater that made a quick appearance- the 9th species of tubenose for the day! Seabirds kept following the boat but we needed to make it back before dark so Brian picked up speed on the way back. The three hours back to the dock were probably the most physically taxing of the day- I had already been standing up for 8 hours and the boat was bouncing up and down even harder as it went faster. I tried sitting down on the benches but ended up getting so soaked with seawater that I just went back to standing under the eaves of the deck sheltered from the splash zone. It didn't help that it was too windy for my hat and I was developing a nasty sunburn on my forehead since the seawater had washed away my morning coat of sunscreen (entirely my fault for not re-applying).

Sooty Shearwater

It was 4:30 in the afternoon by the time Vikas, Andy and I staggered off the boat and headed back to our AirBnb, where we took some extremely needed showers and even more needed naps. That evening we had a celebratory seafood dinner in a nearby restaurant, cooked in the classic Southern style (deep-fried and covered in butter). 

The next day we were driving back to DC, although of course we made some stops on the way north. After a leisurely start we returned to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, where we enjoyed the many waterbirds congregating along the coast, including Least Terns, Royal Terns, Sandwich Terns, Gull-billed Terns, Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones, American Oystercatchers, and a surprise Arctic Tern. Inland the Eastern Meadowlarks and Red-winged Blackbirds were singing, and a Purple Martin gave me some surprisingly good photo-ops as it flew back and forth in front of us against the wind. 

Least Tern

Mostly Royal Terns with a few other birds sneaking in

Sandwich Tern

Gull-billed Tern with a frog!

American Oystercatcher

Arctic Tern pretending to be a Least Tern

Red-winged Blackbird

Eastern Meadowlark

Purple Martin

Clasping Venus's Looking Glass (Triodanis perfoliata)

Some sort of flower beetle on an Indian Blanket

Further north we stopped briefly at the tiny Outer Banks Arboretum in the town of Nag's Head, as there had been recent eBird records of Brown-headed Nuthatch which I still needed for my year list. There were indeed a few Brown-headed Nuthatches but they weren't particularly cooperative for photos, and I only managed pictures of the local Green Heron.

Green Heron

After a truly uninspiring lunch in Nag's Head we continued northward, making one last stop in the Piney Grove Preserve to look for Red-cockaded Woodpecker. I had been there once before way back in 2018 where I dipped on them and, well, we dipped on them again this time, with no sightings or even calls. It was a beautiful area with its re-planted Loblolly Pines, and we had a number of other good birds including Northern Bobwhite, Yellow-breasted Chat, Worm-eating Warbler, Hooded Warbler, and Prairie Warbler, although all but the Prairie Warbler were heard only. The woods were, as it turned out, also literally crawling with ticks and we all picked several off of us by the end of the day. Fun times in nature!

Prairie Warbler

The forest in Piney Grove Preserve

Ticks and dips aside it was another fun day of birding, and we arrived in DC that evening tired but happy. The pelagic trip was mentally and physically exhausting but it was easy to see how people get addicted to pelagic birding, with an utterly unpredictable habitat and the constant chance of something truly amazing (like a Trindade Petrel) showing up. I fully expect that this won't be my last outing off the Cape.