A Day at the Beach

Tropical seas and their birds are only a few hours’ drive from Tucson, and Scott, Darlene, and I set out early yesterday morning for Puerto Peñasco, where the heat and humidity lived up to expectations, and the birds exceeded them!

We had 10 hours on the eastern shore of the Gulf of California, and ended our day with a respectable total of around 85 species. There were lots of nice surprises: a fuzzy-headed Roseate Spoonbill at the new sewage ponds was a bit farther north than expected, and a Brandt’s Cormorant at Pelican Point was my long-expected first for Sonora.

But for romance and, yesterday at least, sheer cooperativeness, you can’t beat the tubenoses. Black-vented Shearwaters were everywhere, skimming the waves and joining the feeding frenzies of Brown Pelicans and Brown Boobies right on the beach. The shearwaters would glide in, then land head-first in the waves, wings half-spread in anticipation of sighting a fish; then, ploop, in they would dive, stroking through the clear water beneath us. Our count of 100 was certainly low; and no matter how impressive the numbers, no mere tally can capture how exciting it was to watch these birds at such close range.

Most of the shearwaters were along the beaches, but a few drifted in to the harbor, where they shared the smooth, flat waters with small numbers of both Black and Least Storm-Petrels. The big, tern-like Blacks several times approached within 50 yards of us where we stood next to the Porto Fino. After a few minutes of this, Scott idly wondered whether we would see any other species. And promptly in flew a Least, which was soon joined by at least 2 others; the tiny birds flew around with the Blacks right in front of us for the better part of an hour, giving the best views I’d ever had from land of any storm-petrel.

The motto for the day, I guess: Just add water!