I love a good day on a boat, cruising along the big ocean, looking for any creature that wants to come say hi! Birds, especially! (And whales, too…)

In the past, I joined a Winter and Fall pelagic tours out of Orange County. This time, I went out for a Spring Tour. I just need to catch a Summer boat now! 

This Spring Tour was on a very cloudy day, with moments of light rain, and not very warm at 50-60 degrees. The weather in SoCal has been so grey this spring, and much cooler than normal most of the time. The water was calm and smooth, but the birds were rather few and far between. There were definitely some fun moments, especially when some Warblers tried to land on the boat for a rest - and one that did land, for quite some time! The first two photos below are a Townsend’s Warbler, then a Hermit Warbler and a Wilson’s Warbler - that all came aboard our boat for a break!

Overall, we saw 33 species in a full eight hours at sea. We left the harbor in Dana Point a bit after 7:00am. Our path took us to the 279 Bank, Crespi Knoll, Lausen Sea Mount, and back to the Dana Point Harbor. The Ocean Institute’s RV Explorer was our ship for this trip. Although it was a slower day on the water, we had some great highlights:

Large numbers of Red-necked Phalaropes in a few flocks:

Quite a lot of Black Storm-petrels, but some coming closer for us to watch them feed:

A Brown Booby!

My highlight, surprisingly not a bird - was the thousands of Vellela vellela (By-the-wind Sailors) on the water… and the many Mola mola (Ocean Sunfish) feeding on them! This Mola floated along, and then so slowly just popped its mouth up and slurped up Vellela after Vellela… like picking up little floating snacks!

I was happy that I had a friend on the boat with me, because there was a lot of quiet time between birds! It can be like that on the water, depending on the weather and the time of year. Maybe I’ll try a summer tour out of the OC and see what it has for me!

Enjoy some other (grey, overcast) photos of the birds from the trip!