In mid-February, I flew to San Diego to work at a conference. Five of us took an early flight so we could get to the coast in time for a three-hour whale watching cruise.
After a quick lunch at a closed Einstein Bros. Bagels (the lights were off and the store had been closed for half an hour, but they were willing to serve us from the stock they had left) we got to the cruise dock in plenty of time. Everything I read on the Internet, and the statements made by the people at the dock made me think we had a good shot at seeing whales, but once we were on the boat and it was too late to turn back, the message subtly changed to “we’re between migrations right now.”
Our boat was the Privateer. Here it is backing into the dock.
We watched the crowd disembark from the previous cruise and attempted to determine if they looked like people who had just seen a whale. I was thinking that they didn’t, and we confirmed this by asking one of them. They had seen a huge pod of dolphins, however.
As we headed out of Mission Bay, the marine biologist got on the intercom and told us what we were looking for. We passed a floating dock in the harbor, and she pointed out the wildlife resting on it.
Snowy Egrets
Brandt’s Cormorants
California Sea Lions
I very much wanted to see whales and dolphins, but this was also the closest I’ve ever come to a pelagic birding cruise, so I was excited about the new birds I could see too. I found a spot near the bow and didn’t sit down or go inside the cabin once.
There were many birds around — Great Blue Herons, Brown Pelicans, Common Loons, Western Grebes, Western Gulls. We chased up a small flock of Brant as we left the harbor mouth.
It had been a beautiful morning, but was we headed out into open water, the sun disappeared and a cool wind picked up. Many people who had rushed for seats in the bow soon headed inside.
It wasn’t long before I started seeing birds I couldn’t identify. I had my old binoculars, and they were useless with my glasses on and near-useless with my glasses off. I quickly resorted to birding by taking photos with my old point-and-shoot camera at maximum zoom and then trying to identify the bird in the photo. This is not satisfying. This was one of many mystery birds. It didn’t fly like a gull, and I think it might be a shearwater, but I have no idea which one.
One of the crew came by and I asked him about some smaller birds I’d been seeing. He told me what he knew, then went to ask the biologist for more information. I was hoping she would start announcing the birds as they went by, but she didn’t.
We were told to watch for splashes — a sign of whales and dolphins. As we got further and further out, more and more people quit looking and went inside. Here’s the captain searching for whales. We were told there was a whale four miles away, but there were already six boats hovering around it and the legal limit for one whale is four boats, so we stayed in our area.
When we turned and headed back toward shore, I personally gave up on whales and determined to identify some of the smaller birds we’d come fairly close to.
I wasn’t having a lot of luck. It was this bird that finally made me change my strategy.
I climbed to the upper deck and knocked on the cabin. The biologist, Melissa, came out and I showed her the photo. She said it was a jaeger, but I think it’s more likely it was a shearwater. We talked for about 15 minutes about birds and whales and how she got this job. She was very pleasant and helped me identify two lifers — the smaller birds that swam nearer to the boat — Scripp’s Murrelet and Rhinoceros Auklet (next posts).
Everybody had given up all hope. I had returned to the lower deck to chat with a friend when the boat turned and I saw a large flock of birds in the distance. I knew it was something interesting, so I dashed back top and found a good place on the railing just as Melissa came over the intercom and reported that they’d found a pod of Common Dolphins. We could see them surfacing in the distance, and as we raced toward them, they raced toward us.
We headed into Mission Bay, mollified that we hadn’t been completely shut out.
A Harbor Seal (I think) followed us down the channel for a couple hundred yards, but he couldn’t keep up and finally quit.
The sea lions were still in the same spot on the floating dock.
We were told this was the least-productive cruise, whale- and dolphin-wise since November. As we filed off the boat, we were given free passes for another cruise, which didn’t do those of us from Illinois much good. But I did see some dolphins and get two lifers. I felt bad for my four friends whom I talked into spending $44 for the trip, but they all professed to have had a good time. As we walked down the dock, A Black-crowned Night Heron flew in and landed on a yacht in the harbor.
