ML458286721

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Originally misidentified as a Cook's Petrel, the CBRC has recently reviewed and accepted this submission as the first San Diego County record of Stejneger's Petrel. The field marks indicating Stejneger's are: White notch behind the eye, and gray partial breast band behind the notch.  Broad white forehead, unlike the more restricted pale on forehead and white supercilium seen on Cook’s and Masatierra.  Contrastingly darker head/nape than back.  Strongly set off “M” pattern on back, due to paler secondaries and greater coverts than are seen on Cook’s which often looks more uniform on the wing pattern.  Extensive black on the tail.  Thin bill, unlike Masatierra Petrel.  Thanks to Alvaro Jaramillo for nailing this down. The original misidentification follows: Seen at the lower lagoon in the African Outpost at about 12:45 PM from this vantage point, (33.0985897, -116.9992571). The bird behaved like a tern circling over the lagoon, then swooping down toward the water and actually landing in the water, having appeared to catch something, it then floated on the water half submerged, wings out, before resuming flight. A few seconds later the bird flew behind some trees to our immediate left. We moved to try to get a better view but were unable to relocate. Photos are taken by Kris and Geoff with the first five by Geoff and the last five by Kris. We sent screen shots of the bird to several San Diego bird experts and they identified the bird; otherwise, I neither Kris nor I would have been able to do so without doing some extensive research. Paul Lehman sent an email to the San Diego Regional Birding list serve discussing the ID process.

Technical information

Model

DC-FZ80

ISO

80

Focal length

9.5 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/5.0

Shutter speed

1/800 sec

Dimensions

966 pixels x 914 pixels

Original file size

154.1 KB