2025 Pt. Pinos Seawatch - 7 Nov

Weather: At the Point, it was a calm day. The swell was substantial, though somewhat diminished from yesterday, and visibility was generally pretty good, except from about 1400-1545, when the fog was so thick we couldn't even see the end of Pt. Pinos. At the outer buoy at dawn, winds were NNE at 4 knots. They switched to W at 1100, building to 12 knots by the count's end. Pressure at dawn was 30.18 and it fell to 30.03 by the count's end.

Birds: We had a modest loon flight this morning! 382 Red-throats and 381 Pacifics were tallied today, with the busiest loon hours being 0700-0900. I really was expecting a big Surf Scoter flight today: winds further north on the Pacific coast have finally become favorable for migration, but we still had just 313 pass by. A lone drake Redhead came by this afternoon: always a good bird at Seawatch!

It was a decent alcid day: 288 Rhinoceros (mostly from 0700-0900), a Cassin's Auklet, 2 Marbled Murrelets, and 285 Common Murres (mostly during the dawn and sunset hours).

Red Phalaropes were moving out of the bay today; we tallied 336.

The jaeger show (5 Parasitics and 3 Poms) was a fun watch, as always. There sure seem to be more Parasitics hanging around the bay than there have during my other seasons (perhaps, this coincides with the good amount of Elegant Terns that are still around!), and I'm digging it, though the terns and gulls sure don't seem to share my opinion...

And the storm-petrels keep going! Today's Leach's (1), Ashy (4), and Black (4) put us over FIFTY storm-petrels logged during Seawatch's first week. Scoters and storm-petrels occupy completely different levels of airspace at Pt. Pinos, so I guess it's a good thing the scoter flight is not happening right now--there's no way I could spend as much time fixated on the storm-petrel zone if high scoter flocks were blasting by... Bill even ran (yes, ran with his legs) from Seaside to see if he could get a storm-petrel on his running list. Hopefully, the Black Storm-Petrel he got gave him enough juice to make the return run somewhat painless...

Kai was on a boat that departed from Moss Landing today and had Black and Ashy Storm-Petrels... what a crazy week it's been for them in the bay!

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/430380

2025 Pt. Pinos Seawatch - 6 Nov

Weather: In terms of wind, it was calm at Seawatch today, but in terms of the Pacific Ocean, it was some of the wildest surf I've seen here. During high tide, waves were crashing over the highest parts of Pt. Pinos, and surf was raging up to within a few feet of the bench. The waves flushed all the kelp flies from the rocks--they took refuge on the green concrete block. At one point, fifteen Black Oystercatchers were huddled on the same bit of Pt. Pinos and managed to not bicker about their circumstances. (Typically, the two oystercatcher pairs have several territorial disagreements each day.) Visibility was frustrating: there were birds, but for most of the day we struggled to see them due to salt spray and fog; the last hour of the count was completely socked in... At the outer buoy, it was blowing 8 knots from the northeast at dawn. The wind dropped to 4 knots at 0900, switched to NNW at 1100, and built back to 15 knots by sunset. Always a bit confounding when we want the west wind to give us tubenoses, but instead it gives us fog that prevents us from seeing them... pressure at dawn was 30.22, at sunset 30.19

Birds: We had our first strong SURF SCOTER flight in several days, finishing with 1296 tallied, as well as 1 BLACK SCOTER. Two interesting notes about today's flocks: almost all individuals were females, and we noted a lot of flocks flying into the bay (per protocol, these are not counted.) Before the fog set in, there was some decent afternoon alcid movement: 118 RHINOCEROS AUKLETS, 284 COMMON MURRES. It was a good afternoon for loons--we had our first triple-digit PACIFIC LOON hour right before the fog came in, and we ended the day with 109 Red-throats, 338 Pacifics, and 14 Commons.

More storm-petrels!! In fact, by ordinary Seawatch standards, today was a spectacular storm-petrel day, with 1 Black and 3 Leach's, all essentially at kelpline distance. We're still a little spoiled by yesterday's forty-four storm-petrels, though, so today's storm-petrel show didn't feel as spectacular as it truly should have. We also had twenty Northern Fulmars, 10 Pink-footed Shearwaters (the first of this species for a couple days), and 6 Sooty Shearwaters.

Other highlights included 6 Parasitic and 1 Pomarine Jaeger, a Northern Harrier setting out over the bay, and four Common Ravens that caught our attention when they croaked overhead as they did a brief sightseeing flight above Pt. Pinos. This is the first time I've seen more than one raven from the Point, and per eBird, the previous high count was two...

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/430088

November 5 - Storm Petrels

One of several Black Storm-petrels just beyond the rocks

Weather: At Pt. Pinos, the day started fairly calm and mostly cloudy. Enough sky was clear, however, that we caught the moon setting into the ocean to our west as the sky to our east turned red. There were many rainbows today. The wind started to pick up from the south around 0800; some of the gusts were substantial, but we never had to hunker in behind a vehicle. The wind dropped off again by late afternoon, and though it looked very rainy over towards Santa Cruz, we only got a few sprinkles at the Seawatch. Visibility was a little rough in the morning: the air seemed very wet. At the outer buoy, it was blowing from the SE at 25 knots at dawn. The wind remained in this range until 1500, when it dropped to 12 knots. Pressure at dawn was 30.01, and pressure rose throughout the day to 30.16 at sunset. There is a substantial storm offshore; last night a BIG weather system was rotating counterclockwise around the north Pacific, impacting the central California coast up to southeast Alaska. I got to Seawatch today not knowing if I should look for Horned Puffins or if I should look for frigatebirds--it was a hard weather system to get a read on, but I knew that something unexpected would probably pass Seawatch.

We like northwest winds at Pt. Pinos, but in the four years I've counted here, I've noticed that boobies and storm-petrels turn up more often than not after strong south. Well, we had an EPIC storm-petrel day at Seawatch: we had 44 storm-petrels of three species, and we saw storm-petrels within every full hour of the count. That's ten hours of storm-petrels! These all were heading out of the bay at varying distances, from binocular-range birds at the kelpline to ones at the horizon line. We even saw an Ashy pop up in the same field of view as an arcing Black-footed Albatross: where else but Pinos can you stand on land and watch this?!

The storm-petrel breakdown: 2 Leach's, 27 Ashy, 9 Black (prior to today, just four total had been recorded during Seawatch!), and 6 unidentified storm-petrels. In regard to other tubenoses, we had 1 Black-footed Albatross, 1 unidentified albatross, 31 Northern Fulmars, and 6 Sooty Shearwaters.

Our "regular" seawatch birds were pretty slim today--not surprising on a day with very strong winds from the direction that migratory birds are trying to get. We had just 167 Surf Scoters, 35 Red-throated Loons, 56 Pacific Loons, and 3 Common Loons; 46 Brant--a "seagoose" we see here more often when the weather's bad--were nice.

Alcid diversity and numbers were up today, with most movement happening from dawn-0800. 222 Rhinoceros Auklets, 28 Cassin's Auklets, 3 Marbled Murrelets, 1 Pigeon Guillemot, 384 Common Murres.

Other highlights today: a gorgeous SABINE'S GULL Kai spotted--always a great bird during Seawatch season; 2 Parasitic Jaegers; 2 Red-necked Grebes; our first Band-tailed Pigeon flock of the season; a Peregrine Falcon stooping on a Black Turnstone.

Tonight, I'm going to bed feeling like I went to storm-petrel school--during the last hour of the count, I spotted a distant Black that, this morning, I would not have been able to confidently identify at that range. I'm going to bed with tired eyes: storm-petrels are easier to lose in the troughs than they are to find, and winnowing them from the waves involves a different type of looking. And I am going to bed very happy: any day with a storm-petrel at Seawatch is a great day, let alone 10 hours of 44 storm-petrels shared with so many Seawatch friends. Often after busy migration days at Seawatch, I see scoters or murres when I close my eyes in bed. Tonight, I'll probably keep seeing storm-petrels...

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/429842