Dermot Breen's Blog: California 2nd February 2015

Friday, 27 February 2015

California 2nd February 2015

After arriving in San Ysidro the previous night which headed the short distance up to San Diego harbour to go out on one of the whale watching boat tours. The main focus of these trips are the Pacific Grey Whales that past along here during their migration down to Baja, Mexcio where the females give birth. We saw several Grey Whales during the three hour trip. Their heart-shaped blows were quite distinctive. These trips can also be good for picking seabirds that aren't often seen from the shoreline. The winter months tend to be rather quiet but we still saw a few good seabirds such as several Scripp's Murrelets (recently spilt from Guadalupe Murrelet), Rhinoceros Auklet, Cassin's Auklet, many Black-vented Shearwaters and probably up to ten Brown Boobies. Most of the Murrelets/Auklets were very difficult to get decent views of. They would either dive or fly off long before the boat would come near to them.
There was a heavy military presence in the large harbour as San Diego harbour is largest naval base on the west coast of the United States.

After the boat trip we had a look for California Gnatcatcher which is a species that's restricted to SW California and the Baja peninsula. We had excellent views of these gnatcatchers that seem to keep themselves to low scrubby vegetation that seemed to be common in the undeveloped areas of this area of California.