Sooty Tern, for some reason on a beach in Los Angeles

Sooty Tern has two-hour layover at LAX

The eBird summary for Sooty Tern includes the following: “tropical seabird . . . found in warm tropical waters . . . usually stays far offshore, and is rarely seen near land except when blown off course by a hurricane.” So you can imagine the excitement amongst bird-nerds in L.A. when one was spotted at Dockweiler State Beach one non-hurricane morning. A Sooty Tern had been seen the day before in Orange County. That bird flew off mid-morning and wasn’t seen again.

That next morning, I was at Playa del Rey, checking a flock of terns on the off-chance that the Sooty Tern was roosting there (it wasn’t). My plan was to head to Dockweiler Beach to look through the tern flocks there next. Delightfully, Chris Dean found the Sooty Tern at Dockweiler before I headed over and sent word out. I hopped in my car and moved 2.5 miles south from were I was.

Luckily for me, this was one of those easy chases. As I got out of my car, I saw Chris and another birder staring through their binoculars at a tern flock. I looked where they were looking, and saw one dark-backed bird amongst the group. Had I not known I was looking for a Sooty Tern, I might’ve figured it was a Black Skimmer. By the time I made it to the flock, the Sooty Tern was the closest bird to me. And it cooperatively sat still for 5 minutes.

While we watched the bird, a steady stream of birders arrived. There’s nothing like the anxious, awkward half-jog of middle-aged humans dressed for a safari, lugging binoculars and long-lensed cameras, desperately hoping they hadn’t arrived a minute too late. Until 11:00am, they hadn’t. The tern flock regularly flushed, usually because of beachgoers. I did my best to steer folks away. But you can’t keep them all a safe distance. Other times it seemed that the trigger was a loud plane taking off from LAX. Each time, to the relief of the birders, the Sooty Tern came back around and settled on the beach.

At 11, the tern flock flushed again. This time, the Sooty Tern flew away, out to Santa Monica Bay in the direction of Point Dume. Unlike the previous flushes, this time it never turned back. Because of the bird’s dark black back, we were able to stay on it over the bay for 10-15 minutes. A couple lucky birders showed up to at least get distant views of a dark bird that we insisted was the Sooty Tern. By 11:15, the bird was out of range for the scopes. To the relief of many, it showed back up at the beach in the afternoon.

The lucky ones, in an assortment of REI adventurewear, watch the Sooty Tern fly away

This turns out to have been a first L.A. County record of Sooty Tern. It was also a lifer for me, and a fantastic addition to my 5MR list.