The one regret I have about my recent sojourn was that costs prohibited a stop in both Seattle and Seoul, and for a number of reasons I opted for Seattle. DODR commenter Christian, who was to be my host in Korea, had even kindly sent me A Field Guide to the Birds of Korea (man, did I want to see a Fairy Pitta or a Black Paradise Flycatcher). But even that cloud sported the proverbial silver lining, as it allowed me fulfill a long-standing dream.
To sit in meditative bliss at the top of Mt. Rainier? To be served aplets and cotlets and demitasse of exquisitely rare coffee while Miss Washington gives me a foot rub? To be the first to discover a yet-unknown species of woodpecker dwelling in the cavity of an 400-year-old old growth Douglas Fir?
No, um, really no, and no.
My big indulgence this trip was to pay for the privilege of boarding a small, creaky vessel populated by a band of like-minded obsessives who were equally eager to chug 45 miles out to sea in order to gawp at the birdlife therein.
You see, most birders, once they catch the fever, want to see all kinds of birds. And within the world of avifauna, there is a small set of species that spend virtually all of their non-breeding lives at sea. So to see them you have to set out to sea. In birding jargon, this is called “doing a pelagic.” That is, venturing by boat into the “pelagic” zone, i.e. the open sea not near either the coast or the ocean floor (this article offers a term I didn’t know until just now – the water near to the coast or ocean floor is called the “demersal zone”).
My first pelagic did not get off to a promising start. Again, economics made me choose between renting a car and staying in a motel. Rides not forthcoming, I chose the former. This meant getting on the road in Seattle at 2:15am to make a 5:30 boat – that’s even earlier than I got up to peep at the Oklahoma courtship rituals of the Greater Prairie-chicken! So I climbed into my Chevy Cobalt (that was, um, red – somebody in marketing is so fired), made my way to I-5 South, and it started to drizzle, which over the next two hours morphed into a steady shower. I thought the trip was doomed.
But {cue heavenly chorus} just as I parked in the dockside lot the rain just faded away. I easily located the Monte Carlo's berth, greeted the friendly crew from Westport Seabirds, made pals with a guy from Indiana as relatively clueless about pelagic birds as I, and became nearly giddy with anticipation.
The crew included three expert seabirders hired as spotters. Good thing, too. It’s tough enough to ID birds on terra firma. But consider that you’re bracing yourself any which way, on a small boat in fast motion or rolling over 5 to 6-foot swells, trying to aim binoculars at birds either bobbing up and down said swells or careening along with the stiff breeze, sometimes halfway to the horizon, with sea spray regularly obscuring your lenses. It’s a wonder you see anything at all, let alone work out the subtleties that differentiate, say, a Sooty from a Short-tailed Shearwater.
But I had done some homework, the spotters were brilliant, and my stomach proved impervious to seasickness. The reward was 20 new species to add to my life list, from the magnificent Black-footed Albatross (part of a larger bird family inelegantly termed the “tubenoses”), to the delicate Leach’s Storm-petrel, to that fearsome sea pirate the South Polar Skua and, in a very rare occurrence, both Tufted and Horned Puffins. As a total bonus, I got a gander at the bizarre ocean sunfish (factoid: world’s largest “bony fish”) that often lays flat on the water’s surface and seems to be waving one fin at you in greeting, several types of seal and porpoise, and, to my utter delight, one humpback whale. Birding geeks and other interested parties can check the full list of what we saw here (look under July 21).
When you’re really into birding, seeing that many new birds in one go can be a bit overwhelming. This was summed up at the end by my Indiana friend when he asked me with some more jargon, “You feeling a bit bird-stoned?” And it was exactly like that, especially since the sensation of lurching back and forth on the boat continued for several hours once back on land. But it was one of the true highlights of my birding life, and one I’ll happily repeat anywhere on any ocean.
Bird-stoned. Hah! I love it. I am hencforth going to apply this type of terminology to whatever excess I see in my life. Knitting-stoned, work-stoned, chocolate cake-stoned.....
Posted by: Carol | July 31, 2007 at 11:52 AM