I didn’t see it; just heard it grunting before sunrise in a spot (Barka Slough) where they’ve been heard recently. Not the most satisfying identification, but good enough to count.
Sooty shearwaters undertake a remarkable 40,000 mile migration every year, tracing a figure-eight path from breeding sites in the Southern Hemisphere to richer feeding sites in the North Pacific Ocean.
Hopefully they get frequent flyer miles!
#273
They’ve been in the ocean off Santa Barbara County for a few months now, but I haven’t been out on a boat and they don’t usually come close enough to shore to be seen easily down in my part of the county. North county is another story, though; at the beach west of Lompoc this morning I saw hundreds of them. They were still out pretty far, but identifiable.
I set up before 6 a.m. in a spot that had a decent view of where the kite was seen yesterday. It was overcast and foggy, though, and there didn’t seem to be much possibility of an insect-hawking bird being active.
Just before 8:00 the sun broke through. I only had about an hour before I needed to head home for work, and I was busily scanning trees when a message came through the group chat: “Kite is showing now”.
No one was visible up or down the road from where I was. I texted back “Where?” and started hustling back to my car. “Just north of tennis courts” (a quarter-mile up the road from where I was). A few minutes later I was standing with a group of excited birders checking out my first-ever (and Santa Barbara County’s fourth-ever) Mississippi Kite. I got great views of the bird both perched and flying; the photo above is the best of the ones I digiscoped, though I’m sure there will be spectacular photos available on eBird shortly from the people who were near me with much better equipment.
