ML455634031

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Behaviors

Flying

Observation details

Lifer! They were flying amongst the Sooties. IDed from photos, based on their bright white undersides with dark trailing edges of the wings that got much thicker at the wingtips and slightly larger size than the Sooties. I can't say I was expecting much of anything other than to document the experience when I held my phone up to my scope without a tripod or anything else to brace it and just tapped off a dozen or so photos. But as ugly as they are, there was actually a lot of information contained in them because they're motion photos. Looking through some of them close up and examining them frame by frame, I noticed a group that looked much lighter and a little larger than all the other birds. Even upon recognizing it was probably another species, I wasn't really expecting to be able to ID them, since there are dozens of seabirds that would fit such a vague description, but then I pulled up Merlin to go through the likely birds for the date and location, and the list got very short. In fact, there were only three birds in the entire procellariidae family. Sooty was easy enough to rule out since these birds were clearly different from the masses. Northern Fulmar was about the right size and could possibly be some of the birds in there, but definitely not those with the very bold, high-contrast, dark wing-outlines. That left only Pink-footed Shearwater and they were a match for size, shape, color, and what little I could discern about behavior. Just in case, I tried to figure out what else could possibly be out there. Black-footed Albatross and even Brown Booby would be way too big, and Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel, way too small. All of the alcids would be too small and a very different shape, and the jaegers don't have bright white underwings. That clinched it for me. The last time I was able to add two lifers on the same checklist without traveling out of state was in August, and I know days like this are just going to get rarer.

Additional species

• Sooty Shearwater Ardenna grisea

Technical information

Model

Pixel 6 Pro

Lens

Pixel 6 Pro back camera 6.81mm f/1.85

ISO

51

Focal length

6.8 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/1.9

Shutter speed

3869/1000000 sec

Dimensions

543 pixels x 407 pixels

Original file size

26.45 KB