The See Life Paulagics trip today was positively wonderful.  The weather was
reasonable (sees general long 4' swells) and the birds plentiful.  Our goal was
to get far enough offshore to find the warm water temperature break that been
out there for a month, in hopes of finding Dovekie.  We missed the warm water,
but we found the Dovekies!  We saw nearly 600, my personal 2nd highest count
ever.  Several were within less than 50' of the boat.  Their attempts to fly
away were rather comical, as they seemed too full to get off of the water.

Another highlight was 7 Common Murres in Delaware waters, 6 of which were in
breeding or near breeding plumage.  Interestingly enough, out of 120+
Razorbills, not one was molting into breeding plumage.  Rounding out the alcids
for our trip were 4 Puffins, two of them seen very well.

The Fulmar count of 138 might possibly be my personal best on the East Coast.

Last, but not least, we had several Risso's Dolphin (a.k.a. Grampus), including
a very young calf.


Here are our final totals.  Note that because of the amount of time we spent
right on the DE/MD pelagic border, many birds were countable for both states,
so the total is not the sum of DE and MD counts.


SPECIES                 TOTAL    DE    MD
Atlantic Puffin             4     2     2
Common Murre                7     7     -
Dovekie                   581    33   576
Razorbill                 122    65    82
Large Alcid spp            49    29    20
Small Alcid spp             2     2     1
Northern Fulmar           138   118    30
Northern Gannet           460   217   258
Red Phalarope              14     -    14
Black-legged Kittiwake      6     4     2
Bonaparte's Gull            5     5     -
Greater Black-backed Gull   X     X     X
Herring Gull                X     X     X
Common Loon                30    28     2
Red-throated Loon          15    14     1
Scoter spp                250   250     -
Surf Scoter                33    33     -
White-winged Scoter        2      2     -
Rock Pigeon                1      1     -

Common Dolphin            61     60     1
Risso's Dolphin            5      -     5
Unidentified Cetacean spp  1      1     -



There are still some spaces on tomorrow's trip, and we're also taking
reservations for the April 16 trip.  April is an exciting time, and last year
was very birdy with a mix of winter species like Razorbill and Common Murre, as
well as early spring birds like Sooty Shearwater.

Hope to see you aboard.


-PAG

Paul A. Guris
See Life Paulagics
P.O. Box 161
Green Lane, PA 18054
www.paulagics.com
215-234-6805