A Bird and Whale Success on the Granite State

An all day bird trip yesterday provided ample time to do some exploring out towards Jeffreys Ledge in search of birds (and whales)! We found plenty of all critters including grand slams of shearwaters and whales in the state of NH. As for our birds we had 3 species of jaegers (parasitic, long-tailed, and pomarine) with a picture of a parasitic and a long-tailed (with a greater shearwater) pictured below. Our shearwaters included sooty, greater, cory's, and manx, as well as juvenile red-necked phalaropes. For those of you interested in the full list feel free to check out the NH Birding List online since we had lots of other birds :) Now onto the whales. . .

A great day for sighting whale activity which thankfully was paired up nicely with a lot of our bird activity so everyone on board was having a good time! Our grand slam of whales included 20+ Fin whales, 5 Humpback whales, 150 Atlantic white-sided dolphins, 4 Minke whales, and even a handful of Harbor porpoise. We also saw two Ocean sunfish (one breached!) and 1 Basking shark. Our basking shark was a nice surprise considering our last sighting of this species was way back on June 20th.

It was great being able to spend the whole day out on the water and check out some of the offshore areas we have not gotten a chance to check out during our normal whale watches. Fin whales seemed to be everywhere, with a lot of them lunge feeding at the surface. Here a few of the many individual Fin whales we had during our trip. Can you see slight differences in all the dorsal fins as far as shape and size? That is one way of distinguishing individual Fin whales apart.

As for our Humpback whales we got some close looks at both Flask and Spinnaker and passed by Tigris. Flask was bubble feeding which got some of our birders excited with all the bubbles!Spinnaker, pictured below, was a great find considering this whale hasn't been seen on Jeffreys Ledge since last year. Our dolphins were spread out over a large area allowing everyone on the boat to get some great views of these whales playing around the boat.

A beautiful day to be out on the water and many many thanks to our great friends from NH Audubon for sponsoring and leading the trip. Always great to have you all on board with us and getting all of us on so many different birds!

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