Throwback Thursday #2: Spring Seabirds

On April 15th, 2012, I went on a seal watching trip in NY harbor. As we went out of Jamaica Bay, I saw thousands of Brant and my first Laughing Gull of the year. The weird thing is that something told me to scan gull flocks for Northern Gannets. I kept thinking to myself why I would find a gannet there. Against all the odds, I managed to spot one in a small flock of Great Black-Backed Gulls as it spread its wings. As we scanned around the harbor islands we eventually found a Grey Seal. It was bobbing in the water next to an island with some rusted metal. We also spotted breeding colonies of hundreds of Double-Crested Cormorants on one of the harbor islands. As we headed back, I spotted a small, brown bird with a white rump about a quarter mile off Coney Island. It was flying up and down slowly, close to the surface of the water. Storm-Petrel! It all happened so fast that I was in shock. Any storm-petrel would be rare in the spring. I talked to some other birders on the boat and they all agreed that I saw a storm-petrel.