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Pelagics Off Miami - Fea's Petrel
Unbelievable. We found the 2nd record for Fea's Petrel in Florida, and the first to be seen and photographed. The 1st record was a banded bird that the transmissions showed it in Florida waters. We were drifting next to a chum slick we put out in 1,000 feet of water, and after a half hour I decided to run into shallower water. Just then we saw a Wilson's Storm-Petrel flying towards the slick. Thanks to that Storm-Petrel, we hung around a little while longer, and saw a bird about 1/2 mile offshore do a very interesting arc while flying north. I put the Xenia V at 25 knots and quickly intercepted the bird, which we quickly identified as a Fea's Petrel. We chased it for 15 minutes at 25 knots barely keeping up, but luckily it made a couple of turns to the south and we got some decent shots. Larry got some killer photos, so hopefully he'll post them later. Here's our trip list:
Fea's Petrel
Audubon's Shearwater
Sooty Shearwater
Cory's Shearwater
Brown Booby
Bridled Tern
Sooty Tern
Black Tern
Comments
Toe, you forgot one.... Wilson's Storm-Petrel....which we got early on.
Brilliant find! I guess the storm-petrels were making up for last week....
How could I forget, since it was thanks to that storm-petrel that we got the Fea's. Luckily there was just that one. If there'd been more storm-petrels, we would have been too busy looking at them to have spotted the Fea's as it flew 1/2 mile offshore of us. We got really lucky.
Didn't somone post notice of the banded bird having been detected in florida waters a year or two ago? That was a great call. Nice work guys
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