From May 3-7th 15 members of our ABC Birding group took a cruise on the Ruby Princess, a 950 foot, 3100 passenger ship that is 18 decks tall from Los Angeles to Vancouver, BC with only one port of call, Victoria, BC on May 6th. It was my maiden cruise voyage, and was quite an experience. There were about 35 birders on the ship and we staked out the best deck for viewing at any given time based on sea conditions. On this ship, in not-too-windy conditions the best viewing is from the bow of the boat on the 8th deck. We were able to use this location on the afternoon of Tuesday May 3rd and most of May 4th, but after that weather forced us to use the less windy side (depended on conditions hour to hour) on the 7th deck. Here is a photo of some of the birders.

Or trip began at 4 PM on Tuesday May 3rd out of World Cruise Center at the Port of LA in San Pedro.  After a boarding process that felt a lot like a long security line at Seatac, we got to our berths, stowed our gear and Ken and I headed to find the 7th deck to check out the best birding location.  We set up our scopes and started birding, wondering why we were all alone, when Kathryn Cooper walked by just to let us know we were at the stern of the boat, not the bow.  Once at the bow we met many of the 35 or so birders we’d spend the next few days with.

The bow is off the 7th deck, up a flight of stairs to a covered area at the bow where passengers can do a 2 1/2 labs of the boat makes a mile walk or jog, and where birders can set up scopes to look for birds passing the bow or being flushed off the water by the approaching boat.  Birding on a cruise ship has little in common with typical pelagic birding on fishing size boats.  First the obvious differences are that you start about 40-50 feet above the water, and you cannot really look straight down, so the closest birds are 50-100 yards away, and most much farther.  On a fishing boat most scanning is naked eye, and binos are used to check out birds spotted.  On the ship most of the looking is through the scope, so field of vision is relatively tiny. Many birds just zip through the scope view, and many go either unidentified or ID at a glimpse.  Sometimes we gave our eyes a break and looked through binos.  In addition there is no stopping to get better looks, no chumming to get birds close, no chasing fishing vessels.  The ship just goes ahead.

Possibly less obvious is that birds flush off the water much farther away.  I suspect that a 950 foot ship is more intimidating than a fishing boat, and alcids especially tend to flush far away.  Most of the alcids noted were in flight.  Sometimes this worked out as their flight speed was not too different from the boat’s speed, and sometimes we got long looks as birds flew along beside us.

Next note to self is that it is really cold standing outside on the deck all day.  Bring more layers and warmer outerwear.

Good news, motion sickness was no problem for me, and only a very few of us had this problem.

Check out my ABC post for more bird specific sighting info.

Also see the post by Dorian Anderson of Biking for Birds fame about our trip.  West Coast Cruise Pelagic Birding: Tons of Info.

I’ll post more photos by our ABC birders as they  come to me  Here are links to some of Brian Sullivan’s eBird lists with great photos.

Common Murre and GW Gull from above with reflection 

Great photos of Murphy’s Petrel and Cook’s Petrel

Hawaiian Petrel Photos: The bird that “made” this a great trip for many listers.