Nature Ninja Birding Tours: 700 Celebration

I had packed up from my second night of camping outside of Ventura, and made my way to the harbor. It was reassuring to know exactly where to go, as it was the same place as the morning before. I had all kinds of fears of missing the boat OUT this time! The boat was set to leave at 7, and I arrived at 6. The waters were peaceful.

Not long into the trip, a few distant murrelets flushed, but nobody got a good enough look or photos to secure an ID. I remained hopeful. Not much later, we came upon pairs and pairs of Craveri's Murrelets - not great looks and none sat on the water long, but enough to identify. Later, on the return trip in, we would finally find a few pairs that stuck around. In the end, we had about 30 of them total.

I was talking with one of the female staff from the boat, who mentioned she'd heard what happened to me the previous day. She started asking me for the details, and I recounted to her basically what I had written in my last blog post. She interrupted me -- "hold on, let me check. I don't think there WAS a 5 pm boat to Prisoner's Harbor on the schedule yesterday." She checked, and she was right. There was no boat set to go to Prisoner's - only Scorpion. If I had gone with the info they'd provided, I really would have been stuck overnight, on an island with no amenities except for two pit toilets! It gets even BETTER....whoever had answered the phone at the office that day, didn't even relay the message to the boat crew that they'd left someone behind. They all went to sleep that night having no idea what had happened. What if I'd broken an ankle on the trails, or had a heart attack or some weird incident? I'd have been left to die, and nobody would have noticed I was missing. The boat left 15 minutes early, they didn't check people off the roster as they were supposed to, they didn't provide correct boat schedule times, and they didn't communicate that there was any issue. YIKES as a whole, to this company! What a scary set of mistakes for a business to make. Troy, and the Youth With a Mission group - I'm forever thankful for the ride you gave me, even when we all thought I didn't really need it!

We were headed to Sutil, a rock cliff adjacent to Santa Barbara Island, the only place in the United States where Brown Booby, as well as often a few Blue-footed Boobies, nest.

A few people had gone out a few weeks prior, and had three of them. I was hopeful for 700! As we approached Sutil, one of the spotters pointed it out! Blue-footed Booby!

I'm officially the youngest woman to ever see 700 species in the Lower 48.

The boat captain did a great job of constant work maneuvering the boat in order to hold it essentially in place, in weird swells which were being made by a combination of Sutil, and the main Santa Barbara Island. The boat was situated between. After a bit of watching and enjoying the birds for a bit, including watching one of them do the stereotypical Blue-footed Booby foot dance, I turned around to a small, opened bottle of champagne being handed to me. Aww! Dave was one of the organizers, and this gesture was the icing on the top of the cake, for an incredible way to get to 700 - surrounded by other bird lovers, celebrating with Dave and Todd with champagne, and also with the rest of the boat.

After we got off the boat, Corey and I celebrated the Blue-footed Booby, a lifer for both of us, with blue shots!

From there, I drove a few hours east, getting a hotel in Riverside as my own little celebration - the sixth hotel room I've paid for this year (I've traveled with Swarovski and guiding clients as well). I took a shower, went to bed and was on the road early again the next day. I spent the next two days driving home, stopping between Las Cruces, NM and El Paso, TX to camp for a night at a winery that is a HipCamp site.