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Fea's Petrel and RB Tropicbird off Hatteras June 14; Particpants NEEDED For Next Trips- July 19, 20



Dear Carolinabirders,

Despite losing three trips to an engine breakdown on the Miss Hatteras
late last month, we have run nearly a dozen trips this spring, and we
were rewarded with some outstanding results.  Red-billed Tropicbirds
have already made an excellent showing, with five birds seen over four
trips in May (see my photos on the website- http://www.patteson.com/),
on Saturday I watched an adult bird with a ridiculously long tail for
about 20 minutes while I was working on a charter boat fishing out of
Hatteras.  I also saw a Fea?s Petrel less than 25 miles southeast of
Hatteras on the same trip.  On June 7 on a birding trip from Hatteras,
we saw a dark morph Herald Petrel and a Red-billed Tropicbird, as well
as several Band-rumped and Leach?s Storm-Petrels.   A close encounter
with a pod of False Killer Whales was yet another highlight of that
trip.  The following day?s trip was rather uneventful, perhaps the
result of a strong southwesterly wind and a rather distant Gulf Stream
edge.  Ironically, I saw lots of birds six days later on a strong
sou?wester, but the Gulf Stream edge was not so far offshore.  And for
those who were with us on June 7 and 8, I should mention that the
Bridled Terns arrived in numbers on June 9, though they have not been as
common for the last couple of days.  All of this goes to show that you
just can?t tell how the birding will be out on the ocean even from one
day to the next; you have to go out and take your chances, and if you go
out for two days, chances are good that you will see something special.

Our next chance to go birding off Hatteras is the weekend of July 19 and
20.  This is prime time for tropicbirds, and though the White-tailed
Tropicbird has not been around much yet this summer, they should be here
soon, and our July trips have been as good as any for seeing that
species.  Hopefully, the Red-bills will linger until then as well.  The
last year that Red-bills were around in numbers (1995), I saw five
between July and September.  Both Fea?s Petrel and Herald Petrel have
been seen on past July trips, and I feel that our chances with these
species, as well as Bermuda Petrel, are better than some of our old trip
tallies would suggest, as our chumming seems to be more effective
nowadays.  Of all of the rare Pterodromas that we saw around Memorial
Day this year, most came to our slicks and some were observed feeding on
our chum!  July is also great for Band-rumped Storm-Petrels, and Leach?s
Storm-Petrel is more likely in July than August.  Black-capped Petrels
are expected and are sometimes very common in July.  Finally, if that?s
not enough enticement, the only records of Bulwer?s Petrel off Cape
Hatteras were on July 1 and August 8.

With a new port engine, the Miss Hatteras is as smooth as ever and ready
to take us to the Gulf Stream next month.  I hope that you can join us
on these trips.  So far, interest has not been as strong as it was for
the spring though these trips can be just as good for rarities and even
better for some of the more regularly occurring species.  We now have
the results of most of our spring trips up on the website, and we have
also added some cracking new images of many of the birds seen last
month, which I took with the new Canon digital SLR.  Take a look at
http://www.seabirding.com/ .  We also have room on all of our other
summer trips from both Virginia and North Carolina.  We are running two
trips each weekend between July 19 and September 14.  I hope that you
can join us for a weekend.

Brian Patteson
Hatteras, NC
brian@patteson.com