Identification Tips

Seabirds in general are not colorful. They exhibit: black, brown, gray, and white color patterns. On land you may first see a bird as a flash of yellow or red. At sea you will first notice a bird by the way it is flying. You need to include other behaviors as part of your identification.

Flight Charateristics
First learn to recognize the flight of gulls and terns which fly with a steady wing beat except when preparing to land on the water. On your first trip pay special attention to the flight of the gulls on the way out of the harbor. The first time the leader calls out shearwater, there may be hundreds of gulls around the boat and you need to pick out the shearwater by the way it flies.

Shearwaters (except on takeoff) fly by intermittingly flapping their wings and then holding them stiff as they glide or "shear" over the waves. They tip their wings first to the right and then to left as they ride updrafts between the waves. Even when flying in a fairly direct line, the shearwater alternates wing beats with glides. Even at a long distance you can pick out a shearwater from a bunch of gulls by the way it flies.

The Northern Fulmar also uses "shearwater flight". If it looks like a gull, but flies like a shearwater, think Fulmar.

Alcids and Ducks fly with steady wing beat. Since they are heavy bodied birds, their wing beats are much faster than those of the gulls. Alcid wing beats are faster than ducks.

Jaegers are known for harassing gulls, terns and other birds trying to force them to drop any food they are carrying. This kleptoparaistism as it is called, causes the bird under attack to fly in an erratic pattern. Evasive flight is noticeable even at a distance. Start looking for the dark bird with white wing flashes that is causing the action. Here a jaeger chases an immature kittwake. Photo by Steve Mirick and used with his permission. Photo remains the property of the photographer.

Plunge Diving

Some birds, most notably the Northern Gannet make spectacular dives into the water from the air. Terns are also known for plunge diving and some species of Shearwaters do this as well.

Surface Diving

The bird dives while sitting on the water. Typical of Shearwaters, ducks, grebes.

Extended Dives

Alcids, loons, grebes and ducks pursue fish underwater. Alcids use their wings to fly through the water while the others paddle with their legs. These birds make extended dives and may resurface some distance from where they went down.

Surface Picking

The bird picks food from the surface of the water. Some birds like Storm-petrels do this while flying or on the wing. Others birds (Phalaropes) only pick up food only while sitting on the surface.

Books on seabirds use several terms to describe how birds interact with boats.
Some birds follow ships often criss crossing the wake from side to side. They are hoping for refuse from the galley or looking for marine animals brought to the surface and perhaps even stunned by the ship's propellar. This behavior is called ship following or wake dwelling. Larger birds like the Wandering Albatross may take advantage of air currents produced by a large ship. In Antarctica an easily recognized individual Wandering Albatross followed the ship for two days.

Other birds seem to recognize fishing boats and follow these boats waiting for fish refuse to be thrown overboard. Most fishing boats seems to have a trail of gulls following them. Gulls will often start to follow the whale watching boats until they realize that nothing will be thrown overboard. Harrison and others use the phrase attends trawlers to describe this behavior.

Gulls often follow fishing boats waiting for waste to be thrown overboard,

The same can be applied to mammals. Some dolphins will ride the bow wave of a boat. This makes them easier to see and photograph. The Atlantic White-sided Dolphin is a bow rider.

There are probably more Harbor Porpoise in the Gulf of Maine than any other mammal. We frequently see the Atlantic White-sided Dolphin, but almost never the Harbor Porpoise. The reason is that the Harbor Porpoise avoids boats and is never a bow rider.