A whale of a day at Race Point

This week a species of loon was spotted off of Race Point that is so rare in Massachusetts, it is the FIRST documented one in the state. The species is a Yellow Billed Loon. People have been driving hundreds of miles to see it. I know your thinking "hundreds of miles" is an exaggeration. Let me tell you, birders are obsessed and they drive environmentally friendly cars that get great gas mileage.

I subscribe to an email list called Massbird. Every day people post any sightings when they go birding. All week there have been reports of the Yellow Billed. In those reports, there has been casual mention that Finback Whales are putting on a show off the beach.

On my Spring Bucket List, I had written down that I wanted to go to the Outer Cape to see whales. I was planning on going in April to Coast Guard Beach. However, I had perfect reasons to go today. I didn't know whales could be seen in March. Today's weather was predicted to be about 55 degrees, which is pretty nice for March. Lastly, I had a shot at seeing the rare loon ( Yellow Billed Loons are common off of Alaska. What is rare here is not necessarily rare some place else. But Alaska is not in my budget for a while). The truth is, I never would be able to recognize the subtle differences of a Yellow Billed Loon to a Common Loon, but I was hoping others would be there if it was around.

I left home at 6 am. I didn't rush since it was still raining and I knew it would clear up about 9. I got to Provincetown about 8:30. I parked at Race Point parking area (which is terribly named. Although my destination was Race Point, the actual point itself is 1.9 miles from the parking lot over fairly soft beach sand). I ate a quick snack and packed my bag. I made my way north up the beach. I started jogging to speed up the never ending walk on the sand. While jogging, I looked up and saw a seal on the beach. I went around it so not to scare it, but it still got nervous and made its way to the water.

Seal on the beach

Next I came across a bunch of gulls. For the most part, I find gulls as boring as you do. However, in this group was a large all white gull. I knew instantly I had never seen it. I took some pictures. A little past the gulls were three birders standing next to each other. I thought that they were looking at the Yellow Billed Loon, but they were not. They  were looking for it, but hadn't found it

. You know how I said people were coming hundreds of miles? I got talking to one of the birders and spent most of the morning with him. He was a guy in his fifties from north of Toronto! He drove to Race Point the night before just to see the bird! He drove all day Thursday, rented a motel that night. This morning, he braved the wind and rain (getting soaked through) all to see a life bird.  This guy was very soft spoken and very pleasant to talk to. He told me he has seen 701 species of birds in North America! That is incredible to me, but what makes it even more incredible is, he has not been to Alaska ( Alaska has many species of birds not seen anywhere else in North America, also being so close to Russia and northern Asia, it gets a lot of Asian rarities when storms blow birds that way)

The big white gull is a Glaucous Gull

While we were looking for the loon, which to save you suspense we never found, we did see a terrific showing of finback whales. I saw whales come up at least twenty times (assuming I saw the same few multiple times). They were feeding just offshore only a couple hundred yards out. Realize that a finback whale is twenty yards long, and it is only a football field and a half off shore. Trust me, it feels close! I could have watched the whales all day. If I would have been alone, I probably would have. I made a mistake of leaving my camera in my bag most of the time I was on the beach. When I finally got the camera out, the whales were a little further out. Although the pictures were decent, if I spent more time actually photographing the whales, they would have been a little better.  However, the more eyes looking for a bird, the better the chance of seeing it. So we walked up and down the beach looking for the loon.

Like I said, we didn't find it, but we found some other great birds.  We all got looks at a Pacific Loon. As you can imagine, it is rare in the Atlantic. It was not only a life bird for me, but also one of the other guys (it was his 485th bird).We also saw more glaucous gulls (the white gull I saw earlier. I had asked one of them to id it from my picture). We also saw Iceland Gulls, a Murre species too far out to tell, and Black Legged Kittiwake (which I'm not including as a lifebird) because I only saw it for a second). Another great bird for me was a Red Necked Grebe which is just starting to go into its breeding colors and I saw the red neck. There were also tons of Red Breasted Mergansers, Common
Eiders, Common Loons, and Red Throated Loons.

The whale photos are not cropped at all. 

 All in all, it was an absolute terrific day birding. I got back to my car about 1:30 pm. I drove towards Chatham where I scouted out parking areas for the summer (not much). I did see tons of seals on the beach. I didn't count, but I'm sure there was at least one hundred. From there I stopped in Plymouth to do some trout fishing but didn't have any luck.

Two side notes- I know I wrote this in much more detail than needed in a blog. I had a terrific day in a place that is very far from home. I wanted to write it as a report to remember.

Iceland Gull feeding

Other side note- I apologize about how shabbily written my last post was about my first carp. I know I sometimes have typos. I usually quickly proof read my post before I publish them. Sometimes, too quickly. When I reread a post, a lot of times I will fix my mistakes. However, I did that post as quickly as I could so Zach could see his picture of his yellow bullhead. My biggest problem was, while fishing I ate a lot of pistachios,  the next day they were recalled for Salmonella. Lets just say I was writing between trips to the bathroom and went to bed the second I hit the button to publish.