Pelagic Birding

Sooty Shearwater

Greater Shearwater

One of the great birding things to do this time of year is to take a pelagic birding trip to find seabirds. You can up your birder life list and experience some pretty cool birds firsthand. Often the trips are billed as a whale watch trips, but you can see pelagic birds as well as the whales, especially if the captain caters to the birders on board and tries to find pelagic species. Birds such as Greater and Sooty Shearwaters can be seen in numbers.

There has been a fantastic show of seabirds, this summer, in the Gulf of Maine from whale watch boats from NH and MA. The Granite State Whale Watch Trips leave from Rye, NH. and is a great trip to take if you live in that area.

Whale watch boat we took near Digby Neck, Nova Scotia, Canada a few summers ago.

Greater Shearwater, swimming

Of course, the whales are spectacular also. Here's a photo of mother and baby Humpback Whales I took from Nova Scotia. What a thrill to see such huge mammals up close.
While most were on one side of the boat watching the whales, I was the only person who ran to the other side of the boat to get some of these seabird photos.
Enjoy your weekend!