Date: 7/16/25 10:54 am From: Paul Lehman via groups.io <lehman.paul...> Subject: [sbcobirding] SBA Oct 2024 Wedge-tailed Shearwater
Per Jamie's post yesterday, good to see another bird added to the all-time Santa Barbara Cunty list in the form of a Wedge-tailed Shearwater back on 17 October 2024. There does seem to be something amiss with one of the two sets of coordinates given for the bird's track, which appears to place the bird at the Island Packers dock in Ventura marina. But the first set has the bird ca. 5.1 miles NNE of the east end of Santa Cruz Island. Offshore birds are assigned to counties based on closest point of land. And that includes islands, not just the mainland (for better or for worse). If you plot this location, you will see that the closest points on the mainland (e.g., 16 miles WSW of Port Hueneme) are all in Ventura County, quite a bit closer than anywhere in mainland Santa Barbara County. But Santa Cruz Island is the closest overall, and that's the way things are calculated.
--Paul Lehman
