November 12

Weather: The skies looked wet, frontal, and a bit ominous all day but it stayed dry at the count. The wind was moderate from the south, visibility was good, and swell was minimal. There's a big storm offshore to the northwest, which is forecast to bring strong winds and heavy rain tomorrow. Will we get another batch of storm-petrels from this system, too? We had an ASHY STORM-PETREL this evening--a good omen, I hope. At the outer buoy winds were SE today, building to 21 knots by the count's end. Pressure fell from 30.04 at dawn to 29.92 at sunset.

It's fun to set up in the morning when it's still dark and wonder with each other what the day might bring. I thought it might be a big Surf Scoter day: it's the right juncture of season, their flight had a pulse during the evening hours of yesterday's count, and I've noticed they like to push right before a front. However I've thought for about five days we were going to get a BIG Surf Scoter flight and I've been wrong, so there's that...

Catherine predicted a big Rhino flight, since last year we had big Rhino flights immediately before big weather systems.

We were both right. We tallied 3431 Rhinoceros Auklets today, a number that will likely be in the running for the season's daily high! A whopping 2415 of these were during Loon Hour.

Surf Scoters flew hard all day. Morning flocks were mostly high over the point and 50-150 individuals. During the afternoon, we noticed more flocks cutting the bay: there is something delightful about staring across towards Loma Prieta and catching a low, distant wall of scoters so big it's several scope fields wide coming head-on (bright orange bill-on?!) towards Pinos. During evening, a few big flocks cut sneakily cut behind us over the lighthouse, and a gorgeous flock of 400+ came right over the count. The amount of motion within a Surf Scoter flock this big is just gorgeous, and I'm so glad there was a good crowd of us there to appropriately awe over it. We ended the day with 12,373 tallied. (Peak in 2022 was 4401 on 3 Nov; in 2023 it was 14,848 on 16 Nov; in 2024 it was 4480 on 27 Nov).

We had only 26 ducks today that were NOT Surf Scoters, which is crazy. A White-winged Scoter, a Black Scoter, and my first American Wigeon of the season highlighted these.

Common Murres had a big day too: 1798, peaking during Loon Hour like the Rhinos did. We also had 14 Cassin's Auklets and 19 Ancient Murrelets.

It was a slow loon day, which with south winds did not surprise me. 71 Red-throats, 231 Pacifics, 30 Commons.

We saw an Ashy Storm-Petrel twice during early evening. Otherwise, for tubenoses, we had 142 Northern Fulmars, 4 Pink-footed Shearwaters, 148 Sooty Shearwaters, and 3 Short-tailed Shearwaters.

Other highlights: 3 Royal Terns, 2 Parasitic and 3 Pomarine Jaegers, and 660 Band-tailed Pigeons representing several flocks that milled around high above Pt. Pinos. Where else but Pinos can you see big, dynamic flocks of Surf Scoters and Band-tailed Pigeons in the same field of view?!

-Alison Vilag

eBird Checklist - https://ebird.org/tripreport/431906

November 11

Weather: It was foggy today, but, contrary to expectation, the fog was not crippling for most of the count. We could see the red buoy (albeit not far beyond it) for most of the day, and we had a really fun, diverse Loon Hour! (Loon Hour is the 0700-0800 hour, named such because when the Pacifics start flying by the tens of thousands an hour, Loon Hour is almost always where it falls.) It was fairly calm at dawn and dusk, but wind at the count was moderate from the SW for most of the day. At the outer buoy it was blowing ENE at 6 knots at dawn, and by 1100 had switched to SE and built to 12 knots, switching to south but generally sustaining speed through dusk. Pressure at was was 30.08; at dusk it had dropped to 30.03.

Birds: We had our biggest (so far) Surf Scoter flight of the season yesterday: 3651! This puts us over the 10,000 threshold for this season. The flight was strongest from dawn through Loon Hour and again from 1400-1700. The fog kept afternoon flocks low, and it was awesome to see triple-digit scoter flocks piling, spilling, shapeshifting out at the fogline. We had 2 White-winged Scoters and a Black Scoter, as well as 71 Brant, which usually appear when it's foggy weather and stormy somewhere offshore.

We had a great murre and Rhinoceros Auklet flight from dawn-loon hour; daily tallies: 1490 Common Murre, 440 Rhinoceros Auklet, 2 Cassin's Auklet, 9 Ancient Murrelet.

Re: loons we had 64 Red-throats, 722 Pacifics (574 during Loon Hour--surely, a thousand-hour is on our near horizons!), and 20 Commons. The flight was low-altitude, and there was some movement on the outer line.

There were wonderful amounts of Northern Fulmars in the bay today; we tallied 146. Also 44 Sooty Shearwaters, 3 Pink-foots--our first in a few days--and a storm-petrel sp. that I think was a Fork-tailed. Many Red Phalaropes continue to raft up in these reaches of Monterey Bay--my conservative estimate of these rafts yesterday was 700 birds.

We had 3 Parasitic and 4 Pomarine Jaegers, a Black-legged Kittiwake, 635 Bonaparte's Gulls, and a marked influx of "different" gulls: all of a sudden Californias are a more prevalent part of the mix, and we are seeing more Glaucous-winged, Thayer's, and Short-billed.

Finally, there was a little Cedar Waxwing movement over the point today--just 32 individuals, but several different small flocks, and this movement took place over a few hours. One of the whalewatching boats saw a Short-eared Owl several miles out in the bay today...hoping we have one (or at least enough visibility to see one at the ranges that we do here haha) before too long.

-Alison Vilag

eBird Checklist - https://ebird.org/tripreport/431723

2025 Pt. Pinos Seawatch - 10 Nov

Weather: Seawatch today was plagued by fog: from about 1000-dusk, there was perhaps one hour, cumulative, that the buoy was visible. This season has brought the most fog I've experienced at Seawatch, but so far that's my only qualm, weather or otherwise, for this season. We've already had so many great birds! The swell was minimal, and the wind was moderate SW at the point for most of the day. At the outer buoy, it was blowing from the NE at 6 knots at dawn and switched to 6 knots SSW at 1000, building to 12 knots S at 1300, but dropping a bit by sunset. Pressure at dawn was 30.14, and it stayed fairly stable over the course of the day.

When the fog was not prohibitive today, we had some fun birds: the top highlight was Seawatch's first TUFTED PUFFIN during this year's count period. (Kai and Karen had two on October 30...).

The scoter flight, given the fog, was pretty good: 1618 Surfs, and 2 Black. There were loads of Red Phalaropes resting and feeding on the waters around Pt. Pinos today--at least 300. I did my best to not double-count these on multiple hourly checklists, and the day's total was 478. Often, phalaropes and Bonaparte's Gulls are prominent on the same days at the Seawatch, and we had 1092 Bonaparte's today, including a very cool flock of ~150 that flew in a tight, surprisingly hard-to-detect bunch high in the fog. We also had our second Black-legged Kittiwake of the season.

On the alcid front, we had 34 Rhinoceros Auklets, 1 Cassin's Auklet, a Pigeon Guillemot, and 975 Common Murres.

Loons continue to be slow but steady--we had 172 Red-throats, 270 Pacifics, and 45 Commons today.

Today was our first day without a storm-petrel in nearly a week! (I'll blame the fog for that). We did have 47 Northern Fulmars, including more white birds (which nest further north) than I've been seeing so far this season. We also had 5 Sooty Shearwaters.

Jaegers continue to come through reliably--2 Parasitics and 3 Poms today.

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/431328