Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 14:25:44 -0800 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Paul A. Guris" Subject: Results of Feb. 28 Lewes, DE Pelagic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit See Life Paulagics ran a trip out of Lewes, DE on Saturday, February 28. Highlights included my personal second best day of Dovekies, a breeding plumage Common Murre, 2 Puffins, Fulmars, Red Phalaropes, an adult Iceland Gull, an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull, and a probable "Nelson's" type gull, which is a known hybrid combination of Herring and Glaucous Gull. Lowlights were missing Razorbill (only my 3rd winer trip I this region where I've done that) and missing Kittiwake. The day was a bit breezy, but the Captain did a great job of giving us as smooth a ride as possible. Actually, we started a bit late because the Captain wanted to get the 6:30 forecast before we left. The trip started by heading out nearly due east, and we found over 1000 Black Scoters scattered around the Delaware Bay mouth. I heard second-hand reports of one group of Surf Scoters and just 4 White-wingeds. Once we cleared the bay, the inshore pelagic waters were very cold (37 degrees) and fairly dead. When we reach an area on the 30 fathom line known as the "Elephant's Trunk", we were warming up a bit and we starting seeing our first Fulmars. We headed south and out so we had a beam sea, and out to about 40 fathoms of water. We started finding Dovekies when the water hit 46 degrees, and nearly doubled our count after we started heading for home. Once we got back into slightly cooler water, the Dovekie spigot completely shut off. Both of the Puffins we saw were less than cooperative, one being a fly-by and the other making just two brief appearances before losing us. We had great looks at the Fulmars, including one that stayed quite a long time in our chum line. We returned a bit late, but on the way back in we practically ran over a breeding plumage Common Murre. The Captain was nice enough to stay with it for a while so we got good looks and a few pictures for the DE records committee. This was a state bird for several top Delaware state listers on board! Another nice finisher were two Fin Whales we passed on the way in. The following is a list of everything we saw: 5 Red-throated Loon (5/0) 4 Common Loon (4/0) 23 Northern Fulmar (3/20) 89 Northern Gannet (29/60) 1000+ Black Scoter (1000+/0) 21 Red Phalarope (0/21) 738 Herring Gull (258/480) 1 Iceland Gull (0/1) 1 Lesser Black-backed Gull (0/1) 87 Great Black-backed Gull (37/50) 1 "Nelson's" Gull (0/1) 170 Dovekie (0/170) 1 Common Murre (1/0) 2 Atlantic Puffin (0/2) 2 Fin Whale 4 Common Dolphin We are running another trip out of Lewes on April 3. This is still early enough to find alcids and Fulmars, and we're hoping to find a Great Skua coming north with the big schools of mackerel and herring. Contact us if you are interested in signing up. -Paul Paul A. Guris See Life Paulagics P.O. Box 161 Green Lane, PA 18054 www.paulagics.com 215-234-6805 info@paulagics.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================