Red-legged Kittiwake

Westport Pelagic, August 19th 2000

All photos by Ryan Shaw

oops! that doesn't have red legs! how did that get there!

The following account is written by Charlie Wright. you can reach him at the following e-mail address:

Pelagic Trip 8/19/00


The sun was rising as Ryan Shaw and I pulled into the dock at the Westport Marina in Westport, WA. This was my first pelagic trip and I was hoping to see some new birds and possibly find a rarity. I was also hoping not to get sick. But excitement overwhelmed fear as the boat left the dock and I moved to the bow of the boat. The weather looked great, a few clouds and maybe a few rain clouds, but nothing too bad. Everyone just hoped that it held up. And it did!
In close to shore there were many Brown Pelicans and Heerman's Gulls, Rhinocerous Auklets, Common Murres, and some of the other usual birds easily seen from shore. With my binoculars I could see quite a few Sooty Shearwaters far out over the horizon, and I knew that that was where we were headed.
Many Red-necked Phalaropes flew around. Once we got far enough offshore we started seeing Red Phalaropes and had great views of a giant Black-footed Albatross. Sooty Shearwaters were ever present. Finally someone called out Pink-footed Shearwater, and I looked out among all the Sootys and found two Pink-footed Shearwaters slowly gliding above the waves.
Behind a fishing barge we found many Black-footed Albatross and tons of Northern Fulmars. We did a bit of chumming here and got within feet of the fulmars. Then someone spotted a Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel cruising by the boat quickly. Some Sabine's Gulls were seen also. We saw 2 Arctic Terns on a floating log. Very beautiful flight, nice long forked tail, wings with black edging on the leading edge, and very short red legs and bill. We even got to hear their whistle!
A shearwater flew up with a light underside. When the bird turned we saw that there was too much white on the underside of the wing for a Pink-footed Shearwater. Someone yelled out "BULLER'S SHEARWATER." I got good views of this bird and got to see a bit of the "M" pattern on the back and wings, but this mark was quite faint on this individual.
Now we were about 35-40 miles off the shore. We stopped the boat and picked a place to throw out chum. It took a while for something to find it but eventually we saw at least 6 Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels, many Black-footed Albatrosses, and a jaeger sp. very far from the boat. A LONG-TAILED JAEGER then flew right over the boat, giving great views to all!
Nothing else was coming to our chum so we decided to go out a little farther and then head back. On our way out farther we just saw a few other regulars as well as another Buller's Shearwater and another Long-tailed Jaeger. Pink-footed Shearwaters became numerous and sometimes even outnumbered the Sootys.
Now we started heading back to shore. On the way back I saw a small gull-type bird. Bruce LaBar was looking at the same bird and a few others got on to it. Bruce signaled the captain of the boat to go closer to the bird and when we did we saw that the bird was a kittiwake. Of course we had to expect that it was a Black-legged Kittiwake because of likely hood. This is actually a pretty good bird for August. We got right up close to the bird. Through my binoculars I thought I saw some red flashes under the water but thought that my binocs must just be playing tricks on me. Then Ryan yelled, "Am I seeing RED LEGS?!?!?!" And he was right. The bird had red legs! A RED-LEGGED KITTIWAKE!
Many people ran for their camera. I took many pictures but most were too far away. Ryan took 5 rolls of film on this bird! Size was about the same as a Mew Gull, the mantle darker gray than a Black-legged Kittiwake, (about the shade of a California Gull), bill shorter, sits on the water very lightly with the backside of the gull raised higher than the front.
We put out some chum and the bird flew very, very close to us and landed right next to the boat. Then someone noticed that the left eye of this bird was injured, possibly even missing! Could this have anything to do with how the bird got lost and turned up in Washington instead of the Aleutian Islands?
The bird continued to fly around but was always in sight until we started to move away from the bird. While everyone was settling down on the boat and was talking about the bird, it flew up above the bow, right above all of us! Awesome views of the dark red legs and the underwings. Nobody on the boat could have wanted better views of this bird!
So we left the bird behind and headed for shore. Not much later we saw a dark morph SOUTH POLAR SKUA in with a large flock of shearwaters. Unmistakable bird. The skua was chasing around the gulls and stealing food from them. This is the main predator out there. He eats whatever he wants.
On the way in to shore we obtained better views of Red-necked Phalaropes and quite a few Arctic Terns, plus 3 Common Terns. At the Westport Jetty we saw some Black Turnstones, a Surfbird or two, and some Brandt's Cormorants.