California Family Species Whaling 
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 13, 2022
In August, we took a family trip to beautiful San Diego, seeing SeaWorld , LegoLand , and the San Diego Zoo. I’ve taken tours out of Monterey Bay (with pelagic legend Debi Shearwater , now retired) and Half Moon Bay, California ; Newport, Oregon ; and Hatteras, North Carolina. This was much larger.
10,000 Birds
DECEMBER 3, 2014
I actually have many targets, in a way, a I want to see lots and lots, but there is one species that the reason that the trip is even happening, the animal that has been pretty much the top of my animal bucket list for well over a decade. It’s a species that has bedeviled and bewitched me over the years. California Condor.
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10,000 Birds
JULY 30, 2014
In California I smelt the breath a Blue Whale as it passed feet beneath my boat. You may not get the species counts that the race delivers, but you’ll have memories burned into your skull. Ugandan Mangabeys were part of my family once. In the Bahamas I swam in a pod of feeding dolphins.
10,000 Birds
JANUARY 3, 2017
I started the year in Florida, traveled to India with the ABA in February, combined family and birding in an August trip to California, and in-between saw very good birds in New York and New Jersey. I tested the waters before my California pelagic, with a brief Atlantic Ocean voyage, a whale watching trip from Montauk, N.Y.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 29, 2011
Before my trip to Washington the only species of puffin I had ever seen in the wild was the puffin of the Atlantic Ocean, the appropriately named Atlantic Puffin. The first obstacle was getting to the general range of the species, which is the west coast from northern California to Alaska and across to Russia.* I love puffins.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 22, 2011
It is a smell, however, that I am barely able to smell anymore, as three years of working breeding seasons on seabird islands of the Farallones in California have apparently dulled my ability to do so. A great place to watch whales and pelagic seabirds. And it isn’t just on the ground or an occasional accidental hazard.
10,000 Birds
DECEMBER 30, 2013
Now my Queens list stands at a whopping 302, which means I have actually added thirteen species since my last predictions. We had a family picnic at Fort Tilden less than two weeks after my last set of predictions and a single Purple Martin was flying low over the fields with Barn Swallows and Tree Swallows. Number 300 in Queens!
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