Ten Years Special!!!! Multi-day possibilities

Did you hear about the special?

 

Monterey Seabirds Summer eNewsletter

Ten Years!

I can hardly believe that ten years will have passed since I posted the trip report for our first trip on Aug. 25, 2002. In that time we have logged more than 100 trips on the Monterey Bay and met some wonderful birders from all over the world and seen some remarkable seabird rarities and cetaceans . We hope you can join us in 2012.

To celebrate our 10 year anniversary we are offering special price for all of you on our email list. The Sunday, Sept. 9 trip is priced at $115 ($130 regular price). Just type in special offer in the Optional Comments or Question box or mention it on phone reservations.

http://www.montereyseabirds.com  831-375-4658

Multi day trip possibilities

Monterey Seabirds and Alvaro’s Adventures have timed their trips so that visiting birders from out of the area can do multiple pelagic trips over a single weekend or bookend pelagic trips with some land birding in between. All of the Monterey Seabird trips are scheduled for Sundays and Alvaro Jaramillo has scheduled his trips out of Half Moon Bay on Saturdays. For Al’s Schedule see: http://alvarosadventures.com/boat-trips/pelagics/

Out of the area birders can fly into San Francisco International, drive over the hill to Half Moon Bay to do the pelagic with Alvaro and then drive south towards Monterey for a pelagic trip the next morning.

Half Moon Bay is nearly 2 hours from Monterey but birders could stop for the night halfway in Santa Cruz (1 hour from the dock, or Watsonville (40 minutes from the dock).

Note that on the mid September weekend Alvaro is running a trip out of Monterey on Saturday and we have a trip the following day. This is also the weekend for the local birding festival. Our trips run $24 less than the festival trips that are being offered. Festival attendees are most welcome.

Multi day schedule:

Aug. 25 HMB w/ Alvaro’s Adventures

Aug. 26 Monterey with Monterey Seabirds  (10 spaces left)

Sept. 8 HMB Alvaro’ Adventures

Sept. 9 Monterey Seabirds

Sept. 15 Alvaro Adventures in Monterey for a charter

Sept. 16 Monterey Seabirds

Oct. 6 HMB Alvaro’s Adventures

Oct. 7 Monterey Seabirds

Note all trips will be $130, no fuel surcharges. And yes if you go on three Monterey Seabird trips in the calendar year your fourth trip is free. We keep our group size small.

Alaska Airlines is now flying out of Monterey with daily flights to and from San Diego. Airfare specials are currently less than $100 each way.  There are other flights out of Monterey to Las Vegas, San Francisco, Phoenix and Denver.

Leaders in the news:

The new issue of Winging It mentions in the Milestones section that leader Stephen F. Bailey "ticked world bird number 6,772 when he saw Kenya's endemic Aberdare Cisticola in Aberdare National Park on 10, April 2012. This seemingly arbitrary number represents two-thirds of the 10,157 species currently recognized by the Clements Checklist. Congratulations Steve!

We also welcome to our team of spotters veteran seabirder Rod Norden. Here is his bio from our website’s leader page:

Rod Norden started birding back in his college days with legendary birder Ted Parker. Doug Stotz was also his birding mentor (and housemate) in 1970's Tucson. Some of his photographs appeared in Rich Stallcup's book Birds of the Nearshore Pacific (1990) and the Stokes Eastern and Western Field Guides (1996). He got the photo of the first documented Stejneger's Petrel in North America (Nov. 17, 1990) that he shot with a manually focused film camera mounted on a gunstock. He and Steve Bailey also sighted the first record for Dark-rumped Petrel (prior to it being split).

Rod is also an avid astronomer and docent at the Lick Observatory. He is a favorite with visiting birders. He likes getting to know people and really enjoys helping folks sort our seabird identifications. After a long stint in high tech and world travel (with pelagic trips in all three oceans), Rod is now teaching computer science at Cabrillo College.

Monterey Seabirds is on Facebook! Become a fan today. I try to keep it updated with current events in the Monterey Bay.

I hope to see you at sea!

Roger Wolfe for Monterey Seabirds