ML58444851

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Massive seabird found by Tracy Tate and Andrew Baldelli. Long, pointed, all dark wings with white rump visible when viewing the top side. As the bird made rotations in flight coming off the water, turning, and dropping back down, the underside was visible and the white underneath flashed. Bird never flapped wings during entirety of my viewing, though Tracy saw it flap earlier prior to my arrival and at least one other time during my time at the inlet, having kept her eyes on it for over an hour though her scope (my personal viewing time through Andrew's scope was maybe a total of 10-15 minutes in several different windows just to let him rest his eyes and to get a look at the bird). Abyssmal photos taken, one at 8:37 AM over the open water as it rotated, and the other at 9:31 AM as it passed in front of a distant ship. In the later photograph (the Bottom photo below), the white rump is visible with the all-black wings showing as it passed in front of the blue 60 degree striping on the boat with the the topside of the bird facing us. Please note that these photographs were taken with a 400mm lens and are not meant to be a diagnostic representation of this bird; views of the bird with 10x42 binoculars were better, and finer details could be seenthrough the scope as the bird rocked back and forth over the waves for almost 2 hours. Viewed also by Ned Brinkley and Mary Catherine Miguez. I attempted to see the bird from the end of the 17th Street Pier but was unable to get on it due to the shimmer off the water at this higher elevation; Rudee Inlet was the only place it was viewable from due to the angle of the sun hitting the water. See in-depth analysis of how other Albatross species were eliminated in Ned Brinkley's eBird Report. The ship in the background is NYK Line Poseidon Leader per Marinetraffic.com & Todd Day who was further up the Chesapeake Bay in MD on this date and observed it. Marinetraffic.com past map for this vessel puts it 7.04 miles offshore from Rudee Inlet at the time of my photograph (9:31 AM). *ADDED NOTES (18 May 2017): A single YNAL was photographed off New York 6 May 2017. The photographs in this report better display how the head & neck get washed out at a distance since they aren't bright white like the rump, and are more of an ashy-gray tone. This is depicted (albeit extremely poorly) in the bottom photograph below where the rump is clearly visible as a white flash against the contrasting black of the wings & the blue of the ship, but the neck and head don't provide for the same effect here. Black-browed Albatross was ruled out while in the field due to the extent of white on the underwings that was visible as the bird arced over the water; BBAL would show extensive dark, and the light coloration of the bill may even have been able to be seen contrasting with the head at this distance (as opposed to the dark of YNAL washing out with the grayish head at a distance). I initially input this as simply Albatross sp., but provided Ned's analysis (see linked report above), and extensive research using "Petrels, Albatrosses & Storm-Petrels of North America" and "Rare Birds of North America" by Steve N.G. Howell I am confident that this was not one of the even less likely Albatross species. At present, only Yellow-nosed & Black-browed have been observed in the North Atlantic, and having eliminated Black-browed in the field, Yellow-nosed became the most likely culprit at that time (though my own understanding of the remainder of the world's Albatross species was completely null). Lastly, it is worth noting that Yellow-nosed Albatross has a well-documented history of shore-based observations from North Carolina to New England, with a notable record from 1981 at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 6D

Lens

EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM

ISO

100

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/8.0

Shutter speed

1/500 sec

Dimensions

5472 pixels x 3648 pixels

Original file size

2.14 MB