
DATE: Saturday, August 16, 1997             TAG: 9708160304

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ATLANTIC OCEAN                    LENGTH:  224 lines

``BIRD-WATCHING IS LIKE ALCOHOL. IT GETS IN THE BLOOD,'' SAYS A BIRDER

THIRTY-FIVE MILES east of Hatteras Inlet, zigzagging his big headboat along a waving rope of ocean called the Gulf Stream, Spurgeon Stowe was on the verge of an all-out fret.

It had been four hours since he backed out of Oden's Dock in Hatteras with a load of two dozen bleary-eyed bird-watchers.

At sun-up on this hazy steam-cooker Sunday, the sly-mouthed Stowe had needled a few of his binocular-beaked guests who'd innocently volunteered a bird they'd love to spot.

``Over there,'' he grinned, pointing to a fishing boat named Albatross. That's as close as they'd get to that species in these waters.

Now, toeing the glistening steel wheel of his 73-footer and leaning forward in his captain's chair, Stowe had put on the serious face of an ocean hunter - a look he usually wears in search of fish, which are, of course, what people in Hatteras mainly depend on for a living.

With field glasses in hand, Stowe strained for signs of a different kind of trophy: Pterodroma hasitata, better known as the black-capped petrel.

This is a bird once thought to occur only by accident off the North Carolina coast, swept here by hurricanes or tropical storms.

In recent years, it has been spotted in large numbers hereabouts, which helps explain why birders from as far away as Washington state were clinging to the rails of the Miss Hatteras, ready to lift their binoculars at the faintest sign of beak or wing.

So far today, not a single one of the little petrels with their oversized wings has been found. And Stowe confided, ``It's not relaxed. You feel pressure when you don't see something.''

Then, ``Black-caps!'' somebody cried out. ``Straight ahead!''

Almost immediately, the petrels rose from the water and veered off. But from then on, the highly sought birds were never far away.

By late afternoon, guides on the Miss Hatteras had counted 593 of the species - a one-day record for black-capped petrels anywhere in North America.

Numbers like that have led some experts to proclaim the waters off the Outer Banks the top spot in the North Atlantic for offshore bird-watching.

From spring to fall, several dozen species of so-called pelagic birds - shearwaters, petrels and tropic birds, among them - congregate in the tricky seas off Oregon and Hatteras inlets.

Since they don't come ashore, the only way to go see these winged wanderers is by boat.

And an increasing number of birding enthusiasts are doing so - more than 1,000 people have made the offshore trips this year alone, organizers estimate.

The birders have migrated from all over the United States and Canada. A few even have flown in from overseas, from as far as Australia.

Some are sea lovers first. For them, this is just another excuse to go out onto the ocean.

But for the most part, these are serious bird lovers. They are willing to spend - and in worse cases, endure - 10 hours on the ocean in hopes of glimpsing for just a few seconds a species they've waited decades to add to their life lists.

In the latter category one can count Robert Prickett, a retired engineer from Santa Fe, N.M. Plump and ruddy-faced, he sported a wispy white goatee and a cap that read ``Estacion Biologica,'' the souvenir of a Venezuelan wildlife preserve he had recently visited.

Sitting on a long bench on the shady side of Miss Hatteras, his arms folded across his chest, Prickett tried explaining what led him to trek 2,000 miles to this remote spot in late July.

``Bird-watching,'' he said, ``is like alcohol. It gets in the blood.''

Since taking up the sport 30 years ago, he has made the pilgrimage to Mio, Mich., to watch the Kirtland's warbler in its only known nesting habitat; crouched for hours in deserts and prairies; and taken Pacific Ocean pelagic trips in hopes of adding birds to his list.

It was a different ocean this day. But the quest was unchanged.

``If you're really going to see every bird in North America,'' he said, ``you've got to fit this in the schedule. And, in fact, you've got to fit it in two or three times.''

He paused. ``As you can probably see,'' he added, ``this is a hobby that, if you're really serious about it, requires some patience.''

Allan Foreman pioneered offshore bird-watching on the Outer Banks more than 20 years ago. He still runs trips on his Manteo-based boat Country Girl. And his observations of pelagic birds' activity are sought out by ornithologists, who still know much less about ocean species than about those that live on shore.

Birding has enriched his understanding of the ocean, Foreman said.

But what goes on inside the heads of really serious birders is something Foreman can't fathom - sometimes to his amusement.

When he's carrying a boatload of birders and he lands a big fish on a trolling line, ``sometimes you can't find anybody who even cares to crank it in.'' So busy are they scanning the horizon for birds.

In a way, this single-mindedness is understandable. Birds of the open ocean can be easily missed. On this day, as many as 10 minutes passed between sightings. And those that were close enough to be identified were almost always on the wing, in many cases driven into the air by our approaching boat.

Because the pelagic birds seen off the Outer Banks are mostly gray or brown, guide Brian Patteson said, ``at this great distance, you have to go by shape and flight style a lot . . . A lot of times we identify birds with certainty that we can only see in silhouette.''

Storm-petrel!'' Ann Johnson called out to nobody in particular. Off starboard and just above the horizon, a swallow-like shape zipped in madcap fashion over the waves.

Johnson was smiling broadly. It was her second day aboard.

``Six new birds yesterday,'' she exclaimed. ``It's been a lot of years since I got six new birds in a day.''

A graying, 40-something management analyst for the Iowa state government, Johnson has 600 birds on her life list. She's made pelagic trips before off New Jersey. But they weren't nearly as productive as her first Outer Banks venture.

She likes birding, she said, because ``there's a certain sense of adventure to it. You never know from day to day what you're going to see. Birds are just cool. The freedom of flight - you never know what they're going to do next.''

Johnson is vice president of the Iowa birding association. Most of her friends are birders. One of them, Jim Bangma, came down from his New Jersey home to accompany her on the trip. They got to know each other through a CompuServe birding forum.

Pelagic birding isn't for the weak-stomached, Johnson quickly learned. One young woman the day before became seasick almost the minute the Miss Hatteras left the dock. ``She had the best attitude I've ever seen,'' Johnson said. ``She'd peel herself up off the bench just long enough to get her binoculars up to look at a bird and then go throw up. She was joking about it: `Life bird. Throw up. Life bird. Throw up.'

``She's not here today,'' Johnson added. ``All of the people who got seasick yesterday stayed home.''

The intrepidness of ocean birds impresses Johnson most of all. ``Those guys are so neat - those little bitty birds out here on this great big piece of water . . . It just really blows my mind.''

Why so many birds converge off the Outer Banks in summertime is no mystery: It's food.

In these waters, the nutrient-rich Gulf Stream intersects with another rich current coming down off Labrador at a place where the continental shelf is the steepest in North America.

Upwellings from the ocean bottom along this shelf add to the already-teeming stew of fish, squid and other marine life upon which the birds depend.

They travel great distances to gorge here: shearwaters from as far away as the Mediterranean and southernmost South America, storm-petrels from the Antarctic, gannets from Newfoundland's oceanic cliffs.

The birds came here long before Englishmen stumbled upon the Outer Banks.

Only in the past few decades, however, have searchers like Patteson discovered the birds in their fullest variety.

A 29-year-old psychology graduate of the College of William & Mary, Patteson turned his bird-watching hobby into a business in 1991. Now, his Amherst, Va.-based operation is one of the two main pelagic birding services on the Outer Banks. His license plate: PELAGIC.

Among North American birders, Patteson is perhaps best known as the first to document the endangered Bermuda petrel in North Carolina waters. That was in 1993.

Patteson's normally monotonic drawl blipped with excitement as he recalled the sighting and its aftermath.

He traveled to Bermuda to see the petrels' nesting burrows. And he read all he could find on the birds, even Shakespeare's ``The Tempest,'' which was based on the ill-fated, real-life 1609 journey of the Sea Venture, a Jamestown-bound sailing ship that wrecked off Bermuda. Its stranded passengers ate the eggs of petrels.

When it comes to ocean birds, the only thing Patteson seems awkward talking about is his technique for locating them. One of his longtime helpers, a University of Virginia assistant German professor named Edward Brinkley, said Patteson's method is ``almost instinctual.''

But Mike Tove, a Ph.D. biologist who co-leads the Outer Banks' other main pelagic birding service, said there's no instinct involved.

``People like Brian and me are just getting more sophisticated at finding birds that were always there. . . . Those of us who have busted our butts to figure it out, we're going to keep a few of our trade secrets.''

What novices overlook most, Tove said, is that ``there are very distinct habitats or eco-zones offshore. You have to be able to look at the water and recognize them.''

Among the factors he said determine where birds are: water temperature and depth, the intersections of currents, eddies, upwellings and downwellings, and underwater geologic features.

Important above all else is the Gulf Stream.

Just as it lures the big marlin and tuna that have made Hatteras famous for fish hunters, its warm waters are a gorging ground for birds.

``The Gulf Stream is a dynamic thing,'' Tove said. ``It can shift 20 miles east or west in a day. . . . There are days when you can actually see and feel it. I had a day out there this year when the water went from sea green to a deep royal blue with a line that you draw like a razor blade.'' The air instantly became warmer, he said.

Such experiences make going offshore worthwhile - even if the birds weren't there. At this time of the year, there are other rewards, too: dolphins on almost every trip, whales on about one in every three, not to mention occasional sea turtles and the ever-present flying fish.

Leo Weigant, a Naval Academy social worker, had made 15 pelagic birding trips off the Outer Banks before he stepped aboard the Miss Hatteras in late July.

The day before he had finally accomplished what was ``ostensibly'' his mission: his first sighting of a white-tailed tropic bird, perhaps the most exotic-looking bird that frequents local waters.

To Weigant's delight, one of the long-tailed birds had hovered for 20 minutes above the Miss Hatteras. It even dived into the water in search of a fish or squid. Such drawn-out looks at an ocean bird are highly unusual.

But a day later, as ocean breezes danced across his face, Weigant vowed: ``I'll keep coming back.''

``You're out here for the experience,'' he said. ``It's something most birders don't talk about it. But really, we're out here for the poetry of it.'' ILLUSTRATION: WILLIAM P. CANNON/The Virginian-Pilot

A Pomarine Jaeger sweeps across the surface of the water near

Hatteras Island in search of another bird to attack. The Jaeger does

not use other birds as prey but rather it scares them into releasing

their catches so it may feed.

OFFSHORE BIRDS

Black-capped petrel. 14-18 inches long. Wingspan of 35-40 inches.

Distinguished by its brownish-black cap, this bird breeds in Haiti

and scatters along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts around May of each

year.

Cory's shearwater. 18-21 inches long. Wingspan of 44 inches.

Mostly grayish-brown except a blackish-gray tail. Languid flight

style, it feeds by skimming over the surface and dipping or diving