Whales and Phalaropes in the Gulf of Maine
On May 26, I boarded a boat in Rye Harbor, on the coast of New Hampshire. It was an organized trip to spend a full day offshore searching for seabirds and, secondarily, whales. When the trip ended ten hours later, my life was changed.
“Pelagic birding” is a little-known form of seeking birds that focuses exclusively on offshore habitat, from a few kilometers to a thousand or more out at sea. I wrote about a short, half-day pelagic trip to see puffins in Maine. While I strongly recommend that to anyone interested in birds, it is a modest outing. A more serious pelagic birding trip is a commitment of twelve hours, 24 hours, or even a few days onboard. That’s the only way to see this special group of seabirds that spend most of their lives away from land. Petrels, storm-petrels, shearwaters, alcids, jaegers, kittiwakes, albatrosses – they comprise the “pelagic birds”, using a word from Greek (pelagos) meaning the sea. Although birders will chase them on inland lakes after storms, I would counsel you not to cling to hopes of such flukes: you will be waiting a lifetime. If you really want to see them, sign up for a long boat trip.
I’ve done about a dozen or so pelagic trips, off the coasts of Alaska, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and, with Debi Shearwater, Monterey, California. New Hampshire was a new challenge to take on, and New Hampshire Audubon set it up to provide chances of seeing the more northerly species of Atlantic waters. The target birds on this trip were limited for me: I was hoping for a Manx Shearwater (which didn’t show) and a breeding plumage Red Phalarope, since I have seen them only twice, in their drab winter plumage. The bird’s name refers to its lobed toes, using the Greek words for “Coot’s foot”. That feature is undoubtedly an adaptation for maneuvering left and right to pick at surface insects and other prey.
Pelagic birds are mysterious and tantalizing, but let’s be honest: pelagic birding is hard. Really, really hard. Success on pelagics comes in small and rare doses. Most of your time is spent scanning the wide horizon looking, hoping, dreaming, but not seeing much. In the meantime, the boat crashes relentlessly on waves that seem higher than your average human, stressing your innate human image stabilization system to its extremes. The wind blows, drying your eyes and your skin. When you do see a dark speck on the horizon, you must put the binocs on it and try to discern some minimal level of detail while the speck traces Lissajous figures from the center to the edge of your field of view, and back again. All of which might be a fun change of pace except that you can motor for hours without seeing much of anything. Pelagic birding is hours of boredom interspersed by moments of panic.
The draw, for me, is the amazing biology of seabirds. When an albatross or petrel goes on a feeding run, it can fly thousands of miles away from the nest. They do this by kiting on the wind that blows almost constantly near the water’s surface. Stormy weather, the kind that can knock sailboats and fishing boats upside down, is not a problem for seabirds. Indeed, they thrive on it. Gale-force wind means that they can soar effortlessly for many hours uninterrupted. In fact, when there is a calm stretch on the ocean, the birds have trouble. Most of their locomotion on those days requires active flapping, which uses up stored energy. On calm days they may just sit on the surface and get hungry. Astounding facts about the life of a seabird are described compellingly by Adam Nicolson in his recent book “The Seabird’s Cry.” Why do they go so far to feed? They are looking for pieces of organic matter that have floated up from below, when some creature has died or has been chewed up by a predator like a shark. This matter is filled with nutrients, but it is scattered widely on the ocean’s surface. The birds travel many miles between meals, and they hold on to some of it for when they return to the nest, sometimes after a journey of days (or with albatrosses, even months).
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The boat trip out of Rye Harbor in late May was timed to catch seabirds that had returned from the tropics, or even from South America, to exploit the food available from warm spring temperatures. I was also hoping for a whale or two. The “Gulf of Maine,” stretching from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, has Humpback and Fin Whales in the summer, feeding on schools of fish like herring. The timing of the trip was not great for Arctic breeding birds, because they are mostly gone by then, but the trip still seemed worthwhile for fifty birders from New England.
As it happens, the weather was calm. There had been rain for a week or so prior to the trip, and that storm system finally eased up the night before our departure. So we had almost no waves and only light wind. That was the first anomalous feature of the trip. All of my previous “pelagics” had been on boats plowing through moderate or heavy waves. So for once, you could stand and look through binoculars and actually see details on birds!
We glided out of the harbor on time. Things were looking up when we spotted several Red-throated Loons flying north – they were somewhat late. We had several Northern Gannets, all immature birds, flying fast to look for schools of fish. We had our first group of Wilson’s Storm Petrels before 8:30 am, just a half hour into the all-day trip. These small dark birds with white rumps are the most common seabird; I’ve seen them on almost every one of the pelagics that I’ve experienced. They stay just above the surface of the water, and often stop to paddle with their feet as they stir up organic matter to gobble up. (You can follow the development of our sightings at the entry on the ebird website.)
Another early-trip bonus was a pair of Humpback Whales, a female with a youngster. With calm water, it was thrilling to see them surfacing and diving, even if they were at a distance. Then a third Humpback appeared in the same neighborhood. We were able to watch them raise their tails as they dove. Steve Mirick was the trip guide on the boat, announcing the whales over the loudspeaker to make sure everyone knew where to look. Steve was the best pelagic trip guide I’ve ever had: he called out everything that appeared, giving instructions on where to look, and adding interesting tidbits on the timing of migration, breeding facts and figures, and identification tips. As the three Humpbacks dove, Steve pointed out that tail patterns are distinctive, enabling biologists to identify and keep track of individual whales. I dutifully snapped photos. We watched in awe as the giant-sized tails slowly rose and gently submerged, a profound reminder of their impressive size and mass. Making it a special treat were Red-necked Phalaropes, in colorful breeding plumage, in the undisturbed water between whales.
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| Three diving Humpback Whales. It's not hard to tell that these are different individuals! |
“Jaeger at nine o’clock!” shouted Steve over the loudspeaker. Everyone on board pivoted to port. A dark, gull-sized bird banked and swooped down to the water, then turned directly toward us. A jaeger is one of the most sought-after birds on a pelagic trip. “Jaeger” is a German word for “hunter.” These are bulky, muscular, serious sea-going raptors, earning a living by terrorizing terns and gulls. There are three species of jaeger, and all of them are near the top of the target list for any pelagic birder. They always appear alone at sea, and they make an appearance at a rate of about one bird for every five hours of observation – rare, that is. And stunning in their directness and fierce scowl. The bird flew directly to the boat, then banked and turned toward the stern, exhibiting its crisp adult plumage and white wing patches as it flapped away. I got an excellent look with the binoculars, but (unlike some others onboard) could not reach for my camera in time. Fortunately, several photographers onboard with superior dexterity came to the rescue.
Now, here’s the second fundamental fact about pelagic trips: jaegers are damned near impossible to identify. The Long-tailed Jaeger is purported to be smaller and slimmer than the other two. Easy to separate out, once you have taken four dozen pelagic trips and gotten familiar with the flight profile. That particular merit badge remains beyond my reach. The other two species can easily (!) be distinguished by the shape of their central tail feathers, which stick out conspicuously. Oh, uh, except for the fact that, in the adults, those two tail feathers are almost always broken off, making the distinguishing feature utterly worthless. With our bird on this trip, my instinct was to say Parasitic Jaeger, but honestly, I could not have told you why it wasn’t a Pomarine Jaeger. Thanks to the presence of a few massive camera lenses onboard, we got excellent photos to study later. (These lenses come at a price that would keep our grocery cart full for a year.) The lens operated by Susan Wrisley captured a particularly crisp image, which upon comparison with books such as Harrison’s “Seabirds” proves to be Parasitic indeed.
So there you have it. At 10:30 in the morning, I was basking in the glow of having seen two dozen Wilson’s Storm-petrels, a Parasitic Jaeger, Red-necked Phalaropes, Red-throated Loons, and a few Humpback Whales. These were rounded out by gannets, Common Eider and Common Terns. All in great viewing conditions. “Geez, I got my money’s worth on this pelagic,” I thought.
The Gulf of Maine had more ambitious plans in store for us.
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The Granite State steamed on and reached Jeffrey’s Ledge, a mesa-like underwater formation that hosts a lot of sea life exploiting steep walls above the seafloor. The Wilson’s Storm-petrels numbers grew to exceed a thousand, and Red-necked Phalaropes accompanied them in numbers of several hundred, while gannets circled around on all sides. “Red Phalarope at twelve o’clock!” came across the loudspeaker. I searched eagerly, but failed to get on it. “Shoot, I hope there will be another one,” I thought. Ten minutes later, we had a group of ten, and I could make out the beautiful red breast and white eye patch of the breeding plumage. Score!
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| Red Phalaropes: breeding plumage! |
Minutes later, there was another group. Then a hundred. Then two groups of a hundred each. Over the next ten minutes, it became clear that something was happening. We were seeing Red Phalaropes close to the boat and Red Phalaropes in the distance. All in breeding plumage. They were everywhere. This was a phalarope convention, and it was unlike anything seen before by the experienced pelagic birders.
But that wasn’t all. More Humpback Whales were appearing, some of them close to the boat. They were surfacing and then diving – one group on the right side of the boat, and then another group a minute later on the left side of the boat. We saw individuals come to the surface and hold their mouths open, then slowly close to filter water through the baleen. We started to see evidence of “bubble feeding,” where a whale or two blows bubbles in a circle while swimming deep below, creating a cylindrical wall of bubbles to corral the fish. Then the whales surge to the surface, gulping up huge quantities of fish while breaking the surface with open mouths. (One example is shown here.)
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| Humpback Whale closing its snout slowly to filter with the baleen |
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At this point, we were all entranced. It was difficult to decide where to look. Whales were breaking the surface on all sides of the boat. Some were diving alone, others were diving in groups of two or three. The whale “blows” created plumes of vapor in loud exhaling sounds, and the persistent plumes began to decorate the horizon. The seas remained calm, so every blow was heard in high fidelity. We could smell the blows, too: difficult to describe, but somehow musty and fishy.
Then Steve’s voice grew louder. A string of bubbles was emerging on the left side, so close that one edge of the bubble circle was almost touching the bow of the boat. When the circle completed, we all looked in anticipation at the light blue water as whale snouts broke through the surface, and whale skin was almost within arm’s reach. I tried to capture one of these events with my cell phone, here.
Herring Gulls were enjoying the party, too. The gulls exploit fish that just barely escape the whale’s baleen and linger at the surface just long enough for plucking. The gulls congregate wherever humpbacks surface, noisily dropping to snap up a reward. Humpbacks will sometimes pause at the surface with mouth open, enjoying the feast. Herring Gulls were perching on the whale’s snouts and sometimes hitching a ride for a short distance.
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| Herring Gulls perching on Humpback Whales |
Steve announced on the loudspeaker that he had never seen so many humpbacks on a trip in the Gulf of Maine. There were a few marine biologists onboard, since the company Blue Ocean monitors every trip and photographically tracks individuals. They had difficulty coming up with a reliable count of humpbacks, with individuals appearing and disappearing on all sides. Their best guess was somewhere between 45 and 60 humpbacks. I think my previous high count was 2.
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But it was hard to ignore the other star of the show. The Red Phalaropes had congregated in the same piece of the Gulf of Maine as the humpbacks. It was hard to know if they were feeding on the same things or something else, rising up from Jeffrey’s Ledge 50 meters below. The phalaropes rested in groups of 50 or more for a minute at a time, then rose up and swirled around to a new spot a hundred meters away. They would fly when a whale surfaced nearby, or a particularly energetic Herring Gull swooped down menacingly. Here was a group of 20. There a group of 70. A bit further out, a group of at least a hundred. But wait: putting the binoculars on the horizon, I could see dots sprinkled across the water into the distance. In every direction, it looked the same. There was an incomprehensible number of Red Phalaropes. One could only give the roughest of estimates. One observer on the boat guessed eleven thousand at noon, and a bit later at a different spot, 3000. That’s fourteen thousand Red Phalaropes for the day! Before this boat trip, I had seen a lifetime total of five. Steve Mirick speculated that this will turn out to be the largest collection of Red Phalaropes in the history of the Gulf of Maine.
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| Red Phalaropes cruising past Humpback Whale |
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| Red Phalaropes carpeting the sea surface |
In the tally for the day we also had over 30 Sooty Shearwaters, three Northern Fulmars, and two Black-legged Kittiwakes. And a dozen Fin Whales, one Minke Whale, an ethereal Basking Shark drifting slowly past, many Atlantic White-sided Dolphins, Harbor Porpoises, and Harbor Seals.
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| Sooty Shearwater |
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| Basking Shark gliding past. Its distinctive wake has a series of parallel lines |
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| Atlantic White-sided Dolphin |
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For me, this stupendous day of birds and sea mammals was, more than anything, a reaffirmation of the health of our oceans. I have been on previous pelagic trips where the waters seemed empty, where we plowed through the waves for hours without seeing a single creature. This day was different: Wilson’s Storm-petrels were our constant companion for most of the day. We witnessed several dozen Humpback Whales so intent on feeding that they seemed oblivious of our boat. We had dolphins and porpoises leaping in the air beside the bow, at least for a few thrilling moments. Our oceans are productive, after all. The whales really are coming back after the brutal, irrational era of human whale slaughter. Phalaropes are breeding with enough success that their congregations during migration can stir the soul. Gannets, shearwaters, and terns wheel over the waves and find enough prey to raise chicks on offshore rocky islands. We have abused our oceans, to be sure, but we can hope for recovery.