COOKING WITH SKUAS

"What can I get you, sir?"

"Umm. I'll have the Great Skua, please. I believe it's medium rare. And I'll have a side of Tropicbird. Oh wait - that's probably out of season. Albatross?"

At least, that's what I'd like to say. But I don't, because (a) I'm hungry, (b) it's the only place in town that's open, and (c) they're about to close. I'm also wearing a Red Sox cap, and I don't want to give them another reason to not serve me. And so I play it safe.

"I'll have the grilled tuna."

I'm back in Hatteras, North Carolina. It's my 4th time to the Outer Banks this year and Great Skua is on my big year birding menu. (And yes, they are medium rare.) And while I'm eating my non-skua dinner (and apparently forgetting the advice about not drinking alcohol the night before a boat trip) I'm thinking about the next day - a pelagic trip on the Atlantic looking for the only currently chaseable bird in North America that I haven't seen this year - the Great Skua. And like many of the trips this year, I'm nervous. Will I see the bird? Will everyone else see it except me? Will I fall overboard? Did I leave the iron on back home? Is tuna normally this tough, or did I *actually* order the skua?

I should also mention that I have new traveling companion on this trip - Travis (the traveling trinovid.) I've been birding with him already this year - in Barrow and Adak. He's also doing a big year (he's over 600), and keeping a blog here. Travis - I should mention - is a pair of Leica Trinovid binoculars. After having a blast with him earlier in the year, I was very happy to be asked to look after him for the final week.

Travis (on the left.) Looks like he ignored the no drinking rule too. 

(And what's that? The remains of a Skua dinner?! Typical!)

And so the next day - today - starts like most potentially great birding days with what never feels like enough sleep. And while it's still too dark to actually see any birds.

6:30am. Hatteras, NC.
Brian and Kate preparing the Skua - our boat for the day.

There are 7 of us on the boat. As well as Brian Patteson, the captain, and Kate, chief chummer and bird spotter, there's Lynne Miller (of the ABA), Nate Swick (birding superstar and ABA blogger), and Bruce Richardson - who has a ton of experience birding Australia as well as the US. Jay Lehman and I are the big year birders on board, with only days left in our quest.

Lynne and Bruce. Both hoping for a Great Skua lifer today.

As the sun peaks over the watery horizon, the ocean in all its splendor and horror is quietly revealed to us. An ocean that is completely bird-free. But not for long...

Whoa! Where did all those gulls come from?

It always amazes me how fish offal and beef fat can transform a completely dead, bird-free ocean into a gull feeding frenzy. You have to respect a creature that can not only smell beef fat from a great distance, but then fly over to investigate and pick fights with other gulls just so that it can eat the disgusting stuff. (A not dissimilar phenomenon can be seen in the UK with humans at kebab vans on a Friday night.)

Chum - beef fat and fish parts. Just add gulls.

As well as the many Herring Gulls that are now trailing the boat, we start attracting other species too...

Black-legged Kittiwake (immature) - a nice surprise and a state bird for Nate Swick

Manx Shearwater - dark upperparts with bright white underparts

Northern Gannet. Preparing to dive-bomb into the sea.

As well as the birds, we also spot a Hammerhead Shark and Loggerhead Turtles.

Loggerhead Turtle. One of a pair. 
Notice the barnacles on its back.

We're having a great time - we've seen a very impressive range of birds and sea creatures. The screaming cacophony of gulls continues to flap, dive, glide, beg and even use my shoulder as a bathroom (that's lucky, right?) In fact, the gulls are doing everything except what they're being fed to do: attract a Great Skua.

Skua is the only bird name derived from the Faroese language. And no, that's the not language used by Ancient Egyptian rulers. Think further north: the Faroe Islands - a rocky archipelago belonging to Denmark that's actually closer to Norway and Scotland. Great Skuas breed there, as they do in Iceland, Norway and Scotland (where they're called Bonxies.) They're large, heavy gull-like birds, that are chocolate brown. They winter in the Atlantic Ocean and survive on a piratic lifestyle - harassing gulls and gannets, scaring the hell out of them until they drop their food, which the Skuas greedily scoop up.

"Damn it! This map doesn't have Skuas on."

Despite the season and the snow I left behind in Boston, out here at least, it's a beautiful, balmy day. Blue skies. Warm breeze. I'm just thinking about putting on some sun block, and whether I really did leave the iron on, when...

"skua" 

It starts so softly that I first think it's that's voice in my head, the one I'm mentally practicing for when I spot one and can shout it out. Or that I'm mentally willing someone else to shout. And then again, much louder...

"SKUA! Dark bird, white in the wing."

The shouting is coming from Nate, and he's pointing at the back of the boat. This is it. It's really happening. (Must pay attention!) Kate immediately gets on the bird. 

"Going left. Below the horizon. Going away from the boat."

I'm not on the bird. Did she say away from the boat? Still not on the bird. Away doesn't sound good. Maybe this is all we're going to get? What if I...and then I see it. A dark speck moving left.

Great Skua (in red circle). Enjoy!

It's a terrible view, and I'm aware that Jay is not on the bird. Hey you ungrateful Skua! Come and check out all the gulls we've been feeding! And then, it's almost like the bird hears my thoughts. It banks and starts beating its heavy wings in our direction. We watch as the bird circles and starts chasing gulls. Even without my binoculars, I can see the bright flashes of white in the wing. As the light hits its back I can see the beautiful gold flecks. And, like a July 4th pyrotechnic display, I can hear "oohs" and "aahhs" coming from some very happy birders around me. 

Great Skua. Oooh! Ahhh! 

Great Skua. Notice the large amount of white at the bases of the primaries, 
and the gold flecking on the chocolate brown upperparts. 
The bird is large and very heavy with a powerful bill.

The sense of relief is palpable. It's a life bird for Bruce and Lynne, and an important year bird for Jay and I.

Very happy big year birders: Jay Lehman and Neil Hayward

Great Skuas are not as accommodating as their cousin, the South Polar Skua. They generally creep up on gulls, then sneak away just as fast. They have little curiosity about boats, and once found, don't stick around for long. Apparently (and thankfully) this bird didn't read the guidebook. We were treated to an amazing show - we watched the bird for several minutes as it flew round in circles, landed on the water, chased gulls, and, in one final and incredible gesture, flew right by the boat. (Thank you!) I've seen Great Skua in Massachusetts twice, and this was by far the best view. 

We continue chumming all the way back to shore, which brings in some new birds, including a Sooty Shearwater:

Sooty Shearwater

as well as large numbers of Lesser Black-backed Gulls - a very uncommon bird anywhere else:

 Lesser Black-backed Gull. Yellow legs, dark gray upperwings.

And as we get closer to shore, we start seeing pelicans:

Brown Pelican - immature top, adult below

Thanks to Brian and Kate for a wonderful day. They have such an amazing record for finding difficult birds like the Great Skua. It might look easy, but it's not: there's years of experience involved and knowing where and when to chum. Thanks for delivering again!

Happy birders aboard the Skua!

From left: Nate Swick, Lynne Miller, Bruce Richardson, 
Jay Lehman, Brian Patteson, Neil Hayward. Front: Kate Sutherland.

Six hours later, Jay and I are toasting champagne at Chris Hitt's house in Chapel Hill. What are we celebrating? To big years! Chris did one in 2010, and Jay and I are just finishing one in 2013. 

Great Skua was big year bird #746 for me - and very possibly the last bird of the year. There was a lot of excitement today about beating the ABA big year record - set by Sandy Komito in 1998 (who - perhaps ironically for the day - had SKUA as his license plate.) He saw 745 birds, plus 4 that were new to the ABA region (745+4.) Three of those would eventually be accepted by the checklist committee giving him a final total of 748 (745+3.) I started the day on 745+3 and ended on 746+3. Have I beaten the record? Maybe. (It would be nice!) But none of my provisional birds (the 3 species new to the ABA - Rufous-necked Wood-rail, Common Redstart and Sparrowhawk) have been voted on yet, so I'll likely not know definitively until next year.

So. Back to the champagne: to big years! It's fun to compare big years - and even more fun to potentially set a new record (especially one held for 15 years.) I never set out to break a record, and the person I was competing against most of the year was myself. Could I plan things better? (Yes.) Could I be better at identifying birds? (Hell yes!) Could I have done things differently? (Absolutely.) Could I have seen more birds? (Yes - hint: start at the beginning of the big year.) Could I have had more fun, met more amazing people, seen more spectacular places, learned more about myself? Probably not. That's what the big in big year means. 

And so, to a big year! They don't come much bigger than this.

+ + +

BIG YEAR LIST: 746 + 3 provisional (Rufous-necked Wood-rail, Common Redstart, Eurasian Sparrowhawk)

NEW YEAR BIRDS (1): Great Skua

CHRISTMAS TREE BIRD COUNT

"Painted Bunting!"

What? 

"Red-headed Woodpecker!"

I'm at home, enjoying the Christmas holiday - one of the few holidays that I've been lucky enough to spend at home this year. Gerri is very excited and is doing some indoor birding. 

"There! Right next to the Polar Bear!"

Polar Bear? Home is Cambridge, MA. Not the Arctic Circle. And the unusual rarities are made of glass and not feathers. Gerri's been busy decorating the tree with reminders of my Big Year. 

Red-headed Woodpecker. One of the first birds I saw this year (Jan 10th) -

near the Museum of Fine Arts. Quite a rarity for Boston.

Painted Bunting. Always a fun bird to see - 

and a life bird for Gerri on one of our spring Florida trips.

I'm appreciating the slower pace this week, after the racing back and forth to Alaska over the past month. It's great sleeping in a bed rather than a car / plane / airport. And I'm appreciating eating proper food (apparently, cranberry scones from Starbucks are not proper food.) Also - having more time to check out social media and catch up on communications has shown me just how big this year has been for many people who've lived vicariously through this blog. For birders seeing familiar places and birds, or new places and dreamed-of rarities. And for non-birders, who've hopefully caught a glimpse of what makes birding so special.

OK. Not a bird. But seeing a family group of Polar Bears in Barrow, 

the most northern city in the US, was definitely one of the highlights of my year. 

Blue Jay. One of the many Jays I saw this year: Gray, Green, Pinyon, Steller's, 

Scrub-jays (Florida, Western, Island) and Mexican. 

And, of course, the Whiskered Jay of Ohio (Jay Lehman - my Big Year buddy for the year.)

And - importantly - the Big Year is not over yet! I still have a week left, and there's one bird in the country that I still need and that's chaseable - Great Skua, a large brown piratic bird of the Atlantic Ocean. It makes its living by stealing food out of the mouths of gulls (which is pretty impressive / amazing / disgusting if you've ever seen what gulls eat, plus all that gull saliva.)

 Owls - if there's any useful advice about doing a Big Year (apart from "don't!")

then it's get all the owls before the end of June, while they're still calling.

One of my favorites was watching a Northern Pygmy-owl eating a lizard in Arizona.

I've been in touch with Brian Patteson, and he's very kindly agreed to run a trip out of Hatteras, NC, on Dec 28th. Brian has had excellent success finding this bird in the past - and Hatteras has become one of the best places to see Great Skuas. And - if we needed any more luck, then we're heading out in a boat called Skua. I'm happy that Jay Lehman is on the boat (he's searching for Gray Partridge over Christmas - presumably scouring pear trees) - as well as Lynne Miller and Susan Jones (both of the ABA) that I met in St. Paul this year. And Bruce Richardson who've I've yet to meet. And, of course, Kate Sutherland will be on board chumming birds in and doing a great job of spotting and identifying distant specks on the horizon. 

Ummm...of course, the Blue Madeupbird?

The similar and distinctly less blue Ring-necked Pheasant ended up taking a long time. 

I eventually caught up with them in Eastern Colorado.

Cedar Waxwing. The last Waxwings I saw were Bohemian - hundreds of them in Anchorage, AK. But...I was too busy looking for a Dusky Thrush to pay them much attention.

I'm also looking forward to spending time with Chris Hitt in Chapel Hill. After completing his own Big Year in 2010 (704 species in the Lower 48) he's become the expert of Big Years, and has been a good friend and supporter this year. 

Porcupine. (Really Gerri? Looks more like a hedgehog to me.)

I was stuck behind a very slow-driving porcupine in Rice Lake, MN this May.

An hour later I got Golden-winged Warbler.

Two hours later, I got a body-coating of ticks.

Whale. I spent 14 days at sea this year, and saw many whales - the most 

amazing of which was the Blue Whale, seen on Debi Shearwater's boat out of Monterey.

Even after a year of being on the road, I'm still excited about the next chase. While North Carolina could well be the last trip of this year, I'm hoping that there'll be some feathered reason for me to dash off after Hatteras to an island off Alaska, up a canyon in Arizona, or on a ferry to the Dry Tortugas of Florida. Anywhere - just as long as the bird isn't a White-cheeked Pintail!

Happy Holidays to everyone that's been reading this blog - and thank you to everyone that's been following online. And a big thank you to Don Crockett for putting together this gadget that's keeping me awake at night...

(from 2014 - it's stopped now - but was counting down the 

days, hours, minutes and seconds)

And thank you Gerri for all your support this year. Thanks for a wonderful Christmas, for all the wonderful bird ornaments (who'd have guessed that no-one makes Rufous-necked Wood-rail Christmas ornaments - surely a great business opportunity for the ABA?)

"Now - where can I hang this cat?"
Gerri modeling the Big Year Tree.

+ + +

BIG YEAR LIST: 745 + 3 provisional (Rufous-necked Wood-rail, Common Redstart, Eurasian Sparrowhawk)

HERALD NEWS

"So, we're going!"

It's 5:30 in the morning at Hatteras, NC. I breathe a huge sigh of relief and silently thank the pelagic sea gods. I'd slept in the car the previous night, listening to the wind howling outside, wondering if this last-minute trip was wise; yesterday's storm cancelled both pelagic trips in MA and NC, and threatened to derail today's plans. It's going to be rough, warns Brian Patteson, but we're going.

And rough it was. Half the boat were sea sick, with some spending almost the entire day running between the side of the boat and emptying what was still left of their stomach into the Atlantic, or hunched over in a state of nausea. I counted myself lucky, among the few that felt fine the whole day.

Target birds today were White-faced Storm-petrel, White-tailed Tropicbird and Herald Petrel. The storm-petrel was a slim chance, but was on my wish-list as that was the bird I was missing this weekend after the MA pelagic was cancelled. The White-tailed Tropicbird - well, I feel like I've been chasing them all year. And the Herald Petrel - like the Tropicbird - I missed by a day on my last Hatteras trip.

The blue, azure waters of the gulf stream weren't far from shore, although we had to fight to get out there. We were seeing the usual stuff -  good views of Audubon's Shearwaters, Wilson's Storm-petrels, large numbers of Cory's and a few Great. Oh - and an Ovenbird that whizzed past, probably wishing that it was hunkered down somewhere on dry land. As we reached the warm waters of the gulf stream the current was far stronger, tossing the boat around every time we stopped for a bird.

There were some great birders on board, including Tom Johnson. I'd known Tom from his tantalizing eBird reports filed from way out at sea - places only describable with a set of GPS numbers. He's a bird spotter for NOAA, and spends large amounts of time doing surveys along maritime transects. I'd imagined him as a wizened old fisherman type, pipe in mouth and sou'wester on head. Of course, he's anything but - young, no pipe, but he did have the requisite facial hair and a noticeable ease at sea.

The waves continued to pound as we make our way slowly through the gulf stream, looking for sargasso and the birds it attracts. At times, several of the many Black-capped Petrels we encounter follow the slick, performing dazzling aerobatic maneuvers as they're seemingly thrown about in the wind. It's amazing they're not throwing up too after the G-force they must be experiencing.

"TRINDADE PETREL. TRINDADE PETREL. 7 O'CLOCK" It's Tom Johnson shouting, and within seconds the stern is full of excited birders, fighting to hold on to the pitching boat, binoculars and cameras in hand, all staring in the same direction. And there it is! A dark Pterodroma petrel. It's probably the only bird we see today that doesn't have a bright white underwing. The bird is solid dark above, with a silvery-gray streak below. The wings seem impossibly long, reaching out to take advantage of the wind. 

Trindade / Herald Petrel - dark underside with silvery gray bases to primaries. Notice the long pointed wings and short bill. Photo by Tom Johnson. Used with permission.

The bird moves quickly, from 7 o'clock, to 8, 9, 10, up the port side of the boat and finally out of view. And in less than a minute it's gone. 

Trindade Petrel is a bird with an identity problem. Open up your field guide or checklist, and you might not find it. Variously named Trindade, (and a bunch of misspellings such as Trinidad, Trinidade) or Herald Petrel, it's a bird that ornithologists are realizing is a complex of more than one species. The bird we've (almost certainly) seen is Pterodroma arminjoniana arminjoniana which breeds on islands in the South Atlantic, off Brazil (Trindade and Martin Vaz.) The Pacific subspecies, P. a. heraldica is considered by many to be a distinct species. Oh - and there's also a form that breeds in the Indian Ocean...

Whatever it's called, I'm happy! After making the trek to Hatteras three times this summer, I finally come away with a rarity. And although a different bird, it makes up for the cancelled Mass pelagic and the White-faced Storm Petrel that's now relegated from my list of gettable birds. 

It's the last pelagic out of Hatteras this summer. Thanks to Brian and Kate for making these such great trips - they do a fantastic job finding birds out there and getting birders onto them. If you've never been - then go! You can find them here.

And that's it for the east coast. After a brief visit home - barely long enough to pack and say hi / bye to Gerri and the cats - I'll be heading west, to Seattle and then to Gambell, on St Lawrence Island, Alaska. A place where you really can see Russia. And hopefully lots of Russian birds too.

+ + +

BIG YEAR LIST: 702

NEW YEAR BIRDS (1): Herald / Trindade Petrel