Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Razorbill

My usual view of a Razorbill is moving in a small flock at high speed about a mile out in the Atlantic. Even on a Pelagic (e.g. a March 2011 pelagic off NJ) I saw lots of Razorbills, all of which were flying away from the boat from some distance out. So this particular bird was quite literally amazing. It was feeding parallel to the rocks on the south side of Manasquan Inlet (Point Pleasant), sometimes surfacing right below me. I was on the rock wall along the south side, and I just basically watched it work its way back and forth along the inlet. It could not care less about me. Which, despite some pretty poor lighting, is how I came up with basically full-frame Razorbill shots. While on dry land.

Judging from head and bill coloration this appears to be a first year bird, which may or may not be correlated with tameness.