Seasickness!

There are several thousand times more fishers in boats at sea than pelagic birders (a topic for a future post). Yet birders seem much more vocal about their emetic experiences at sea.

It is very doubtful that birders are more susceptible to seasickness than fishers.

No one has studied seasickness more than the Department of the Army. The research concludes that anyone can be made motion sick with the right stimuli. A vertical motion of 0.2 Hertz produces the highest incidence of sickness. Guess what? That's one wave every 5 seconds--just what you might get traveling into a slow swell, or the frequency of wind waves that might be produced by 20 mile per hour winds.

An extensive study of navy sailors found that about 4% sometimes got seasick even in calm conditions. In moderate conditions 4-28% of sailors sometimes got sick. However, even in rough seas, 34% of sailors never felt ill. Women are more susceptible to motion sickness than men, by a 5:3 ration. (Benson, A.J. 2002. Motion sickness. In: Medical Aspects of Harsh Environments, Vol. 2. US Dept. of the Army. Washington DC.)

What does this mean for birders?

Well, be prepared. There are motion sickness medications available. Probably the best is the Scopolamine "patch" worn behind the ear and administered at least 8 hours before getting on the boat.

Stay amidships, in the fresh air, where you can see the horizon. Standing and riding the swells, keeping your head level, is better than sitting and rocking with the boat.

Those fishers probably keep going out and get used to the "motion of the ocean." Birders are more likely to give up after one bad experience. "Habituation offers the surest counter measure to motion sickness." (Golding, J.F. 2006. Motion sickness susceptibility. Autonomic Neuroscience: Basic & Clinical (129):67-76.)

So, don't give up. Try again!

Finding Wrentits

I finally got decent photos of Wrentit on July 30th. It was a bittersweet victory. The only reason I was there in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range was because high winds had forced the cancellation of our deep water pelagic trip scheduled for that day.

Pelagic trips can cancel any time of year. The best month, on average, for calm seas is July. But that didn't matter this day. Winds of 25 miles per hour were creating 6 foot wind waves, which would prevent our charter boat from making any headway and would make viewing conditions abominable. The winds were caused by a thermal low over northern California that creates strong north winds along the southern and central Oregon coast.

So here I was, checking out some onshore birding sites instead. It is my intention to create a small birding guide for just such occasions--where to go birding when your pelagic trip cancels (sad face).


View Larger Map

This location is found on the way to Drift Creek Falls, Site #54 on the Oregon Coast Birding Trail.

Head south from Lincoln City and turn E (left) on Drift Creek Rd 1.6 miles, then S (right) on South Drift Creek Rd 0.4 miles, then E (left) on Forest Service Road 17 and go 0.8 miles to the intersection with FS19. Walk this paved but mostly abandoned and unmaintained overgrown road to the southeast into the forest.

This is a great spot, May-August, for West Coast forest birds: Pacific-slope Flycatcher, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Western Tanager, Swainson's Thrush, and Varied Thrush among many others.

Wrentits are secretive birds that crawl and fly-hop from branch to branch in the dense evergreen tangles of salal bushes. Besides their descending accelerated whistle song, they give rattling little contact notes: "dt-dt-dt-dt-dt" that you may be able to imitate by blowing an unvoiced 'D' through the tip of your tongue (4-6 notes at the rate of about 10 notes per second). Birds respond to this rattle all year, coming close to take a look.

So you want to see a Murphy's Petrel?

The eBird map above shows the Oregon locations of observed Murphy's Petrels on 4 cruise ship trips in May 2009-2011. You can click the map above for a larger view. The yellow markers are sighting locations for the most recent trip (May 20, 2011) on which I went with 7 other Oregon birders.

It turns out that cruise ships make repositioning cruises at the exact season (late April to mid-May) and exact distance offshore (45-65 miles) from Oregon to regularly find these rare solitary seabirds.

Cruises departing San Francisco just after noon will have dawn just off the California/Oregon border, then spend all day off the Oregon coast. Ships arrive in Vancouver, British Columbia the next morning, a trip of just under 48 hours. Other cruises also depart for Vancouver from Long Beach, and spend an extra day at sea (but may not be off Oregon for all or any of the daylight hours).

Murphy's Petrels are not attracted to boats as are some seabirds. So a spotting scope is necessary to see these amazing aerialists in their rapid, bounding flight. ID is difficult, so you may wish for experienced seabirders to travel with. And this far to sea total bird numbers are often quite low--Leach's Storm-Petrel is the most common bird.

Murphy's Petrel numbers vary from year-to-year. And each trip is different, depending upon location at sunrise, observer effort, and weather conditions. Of the 5 cruises in spring 2011 with birders aboard, only two of the trips saw Murphy's Petrel off Oregon (though all trips saw Murphy's Petrels in either Oregon or California waters, or both).

Total numbers of Murphy's Petrels off Oregon on recent cruises documented in eBird:
33 on May 8, 2009
46 on May 1, 2010
none on April 22, 2011
5 on May 11, 2011
none on May 13, 2011
none on May 15, 2011
5 on May 20, 2011

There are dedicated deepwater pelagic birding trips out of Santa Barbara and San Diego (mulit-day trip) that find these birds occasionally. But, by far, the easiest way to see these birds is to board a luxury ocean liner for these spring repositioning cruises.