August 25th Trip Report (12 hour pelagic)

 Our longest trip of the fall season, the August 25th 12-hour pelagic out of Newport, experienced amazing conditions and excellent birding. A delay at the dock caused our boat (Misty, with Skipper Rob Waddell) to leave a little later than planned, but that was about the only negative of the day during our only 12-hour trip of the year. The ocean was as calm as the NE Pacific Ocean gets in August for most of the day and the winds were light, providing very pleasant conditions, even allowing people to shed their jackets and rain pants. 
We detoured for flocks of birds on our way out to 43 miles offshore, and stopping at a couple of groups of fishing draggers. Early chum stops were not particularly effective, an artifact of the light winds, but we did run across most of our species while traveling, including 3 Scripps's Murrelets, a species we do not find every year. Sabine's Gulls and Arctic Terns were present in migration, which in turn meant we had numerous great views of Long-tailed Jaegers. A few Common Terns mixed with the Arctics allowed us to practice our "Commic Tern" indentification skills. Jaegers showed nicely, giving us all three plus a couple of South Polar Skuas. We had good views of numerous auklets in the flat waters, with Cassin's outnumbering Rhinos by more than 2 to 1. We enjoyed good numbers of tubenoses offshore, and the 99 Buller's Shearwaters is a higher number than usual. Coming across a huge flock of Black-footed Albatross, we found 7 Laysan Albatross mixed in -- 5 in one binocular view at one time. Examination of bands determined that at least some of these birds were from the breeding colonies off Mexico. Along the jetty on the return to the dock, we managed a Wandering Tattler, a bird usually found once or twice a season. All in all, it was a beautiful day on the ocean, and guides and passengers left the boat very contented.