A rainy Thursday

Waking to wind and rain this morning made me happy: it's been some time since we've had weather at the Seawatch. Though it would have been even better if the wind would have been stronger, it was still a very fun day at Pt. Pinos, with a lot more movement than, in particular, the two prior days.

We'd barely made it into the first hour when I started to open my mouth to say how the conditions felt good for a storm-petrel and, before the words got out, Brian got on a Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel! It was the first of four we had that hour, all near the kelp-line and flying out of the bay. One of these was incorporating frequent dynamic glides into its flight, which was so fun to see.

The alcid flight started strong too, with our peak Common Murre (3158 for day) and Rhinoceros Auklet (1702 for day) movement occuring from sunrise-0900, but remaining fairly steady through to the end of the count... We also had 2 Cassin's Auklets, which have proven very scarce this season, 4 Marbled Murrelets, and 115 Ancient Murrelets.

We had a higher-volume loon flight: 313 Red-throats and 1740 Pacifics (peak movement 0800-1000, with most Red-throats moving high past Pt. Pinos and most Pacifics cutting the bay distantly .

We saw Black-footed Albatross 26 times today, which was splendid. The most we saw in an hour was 5. We also had 35 Northern Fulmars, 4 Pink-footed Shearwaters, and 4 Short-tailed Shearwaters.

Aside from a quick rain squall in the 1500 hour, today was dry, mostly cloudy, and had moderate west winds. Visibility was not a limiting factor, and the swell was moderately large.

-Alison Vilag

https://ebird.org/tripreport/300516

Seawatch Report - Dec 11

Today was the quietest that I can recall during this season of Seawatch. Nothing was flying in force, but an uptick in Rhinoceros Auklets during the last hour of the count (96--the bulk of the entire day's tally of 179) are making me wonder what tomorrow morning will be like... a nice dark Pomarine Jaeger in the last hour of the count was fun, too.

Surf Scoters continue to trickle by--193 today. The murre flight was very small (267 total), and we had 13 Ancient Murrelets. We did not break triple digits of either Red-throated (55) or Pacific (93) Loons. 5 Northern Fulmars were the only tubenoses detected today.

See the full checklist here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/300131

-Alison Vilag

Seawatch Report - Dec 10

The flight sure seems to be tapering at the Seawatch: though numbers of pretty much everything were low today, alcid diversity was quite high: we had 192 Common Murres, 6 Rhinoceros Auklets, 9 Marbled Murrelets, 2 Pigeon Guillemots, and 62 Ancient Murrelets.

A late Blue-winged Teal (a point bird, in fact, for me!) was a nice surprise in a flock of Surf Scoters (315 total today). We also had 2 White-winged and 1 Black Scoter.

The loon flight was very quiet today: 56 Red-throats and 27 Pacifics.

On the tubenose front, we had 2 Black-footed Albatross, 6 Northern Fulmars, and 1 Sooty Shearwater.

See the full checklist here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/300134

-Alison Vilag