ML621020719

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

We were on a slick on the high point of Emery Knoll/Mackerel Bank when we saw the first bird arcing up and down against the north end of San Clemente island. Later we saw 4 additional birds between our location and Catalina island, with one bird showing up every few minutes, and all birds moving west / north between the islands. The birds were always distant, but the closest 2 birds were still reasonably possible to find with the naked eye. In conditions where the afternoon westerly wind had still not picked up, these birds still regularly arced up above the horizon, which was how we got on them and was the first clue to their ID. From this distance, these were clearly petrels or shearwaters, almost entirely clean white below from chin to tail, and gray above (a medium gray, and not brown/dark). The birds were really too distant to note M patterns on the upperwings. Shearwaters eliminated by flight style of rapid wingbeats and more cartwheeling style of this bird (as opposed to the more lumbering deliberate flight style of Pink-footed Shearwater, which is probably the only expected confusion species), as well as the clean white underparts with no dark trailing edges to wings, armpits or on the face. I think people got photos of at least 2 birds. Regarding the distance, Mark Scheel reports of one of the "closer" birds: "From measuring pixels on my Cook's photos and using known cooks wingspan and length, I get that that bird was 1.1km away."

Technical information

Model

NIKON D5600

ISO

360

Focal length

500 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/4000 sec

Dimensions

832 pixels x 556 pixels

Original file size

156.39 KB