Pelagic Species in Georgia waters |
| The series of tables below have been
compiled to give a broad view of pelagic bird species at sea, from about 8
miles offshore east to the Gulf Stream occurring in the central portion of
South Atlantic Bight from Savannah, Georgia south to the area of New
Smyrna Beach, Florida. For the record, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recognizes the South Atlantic Bight as
the gradual bend in the coast line of the southeastern United States from
Cape Hatteras, North Carolina through West Palm Beach, Florida.
It is worth noting here that the long-term goal of these pages to to present a record of the distribution and relative abundance of pelagic birds for the entire region, an area encompassing tropical through temperate waters. Before going further let me also acknowledge that Brain Pattison has already done the superb job of documenting this information off the coast of North Carolina, and although his data is not represented here, you may access it at . is the species list below provides a reasonable picture of what is out there and when. It is obvious that the small numbers of birds recorded for a particular month is at least in part due to the lack of trips that have been run in that particular month. The other side of the coin is that some months are predictably better than others. It is also probably not coincidental that the months in which the most trips have been run have, over time, yielded the largest number of species, if not the greatest abundance. We all know how tough it is to make a correct call at sea, even for experienced people, so these other observations should be treated as good efforts, and not definitively. It is folly for anyone to try to keep up with absolute numbers as we get more hours out there, so with guidance from the Annotated Checklist of Georgia Birds, and our learning curve, I will convert these totals to seasonal bar charts. Georgia pelagic species count is current as of: 2 December 2006 |
| Species | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
| Northern Fulmar | 1 | |||||||||||
| Black-capped Petrel | 6 | 1 | 2 | 6 | ||||||||
| Cory's Shearwater | 1 | 13 | 330 | 1039 | 800 | 44 | 450 | 188 | ||||
| Greater Shearwater | 1 | 14 | 89 | 200 | 56 | 7 | 8 | 1 | ||||
| Sooty Shearwater | 2 | 1 | ||||||||||
| Manx Shearwater | 3 | 11 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | ||||||
| Audubon's Shearwater | 3 | 16 | 12 | 210 | 9 | 8 | 160 | 84 | ||||
| Wilson's Storm-Petrel | 25 | 97 | 12 | 16 | 5 | |||||||
| Leach's Storm-Petrel | 3 | 6 | ||||||||||
| Band-rumped Storm-Petrel | 8 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Magnificent Frigatebird | 1 | 2 | ||||||||||
| Red-billed Tropicbird | 1 | |||||||||||
| White-tailed Tropicbird | 1 | 1 | 3 | |||||||||
| Masked Booby | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | |||||||
| Brown Booby | 1 | 4 | 1 | |||||||||
| Northern Gannet | Com | Com | Com | Com | Unc | 6 | 105 | Com | ||||
| Red-necked Phalarope | 60 | 250 | 5 | 66 | 11 | 4 | 34 | 26 | ||||
| Red Phalarope | 40 | 1815 | 2 | 1 | 52 | 2 | 999 | 219 | ||||
| Pomarine Jaeger | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 7 | 1 | |||||
| Parasitic Jaeger | 9 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | ||||||
| Long-tailed Jaeger |