December 7

The morning broke cold with a wind blowing from the east. Loon hour delivered with 1819 Pacific Loons and 852 Common Murres in the 7:00am hour. These birds represented the majority of loons and murres for the day, with only 1346 more loons and 414 murres flying past the point throughout the rest of the day. Pacific loons dominated throughout the day, with only 59 Red-throated Loons counted during the day.

Additional morning highlights included a White-winged Scoter joining the first big scoter flock of the day, and a pair of Black Scoters flying together out of the Bay. A Black-legged Kittiwake and a Black-footed Albatross also appeared during the morning. The cold east wind kept up nearly the entire morning, not letting up until the 11:00 am hour.

During the noon hour, the wind died down and the temperatures warmed up, allowing the afternoon crew to enjoy pleasant seawatching conditions. Predictably, loon and migrating pelagic bird abundance dropped off significantly for the afternoon. As the swell decreased, however, conditions for murrelet viewing increased markedly. Fifteen Ancient Murrelets were seen in the 3:00 pm hour, including at least three sitting on the water in nice light just past the giant raft of sea otters, enabling prolonged views and close study. Other afternoon highlights included a couple of close-in jaegers, one a Parasitic, and the other a dark-morph Pomarine.

In a manner similar to last Sunday, a giant gull scrum developed over an apparent school of anchovies rising close to the surface just off the point. We could see the gulls stream in from all directions. California, Glaucous-winged, and Short-billed Gulls were all present in numbers, along with a smattering of American Herring and Iceland. Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets, and a Great Blue Heron waited for the leftovers on the tidepool rocks.

-Fred Hochstaedter

eBird Checklist:https://ebird.org/tripreport/439878

December 6

Weather: Wind this morning was moderate NE; it died off by late morning and switched to west in late afternoon. Visibility was pretty good all day--somewhat limited on the far outer line during the first half-hour or so of the count. It was sunny and the swell was moderate. At the outer buoy, winds at dawn were NNE ~8 knots, switching to W at 6 knots at 1300. At sunset the winds were WNW at ~8 knots. Pressure remains high: at dawn it was 30.13, and it stayed around that over the course of the day.

With NE winds, we weren't expecting a large loon flight, so we were delighted to have a BIG loon hour (6687 Pacifics!). It was also one of our most charismatic loon flights of this season: perfect light, many big (50+) flocks passing right in front of the count! Amanda messaged the WhatsApp "it's another wild loon passage morning out at the Pt. Pinos Seawatch! So many!!". Fortunately, she proofread the message before it sent, because "loon" had autocorrected to "loin". (On that note, this is my current phone's first Seawatch, and the autocorrect compilation is, at this point in the season, pretty extensive. Puffin=muffin; egret=regret; alcid=acid; rump=bump; pom=mom; passerines=casseroles).

After a bit of a morning lull (9AM-10AM had just 157 Pac Loons), we had another big loon hour (1658 Pacs) from 10-11. I'm guessing these birds started out further north than our early Loon Hour birds did. We ended the day with 10,068 Pacific Loons and 186 Red-throats.

The alcid flight was fun today too! Loon Hour was also Murre Hour: clicking by 10s, we got 3340, and ended the day with 4011. We also had a great Ancient Murrelet tally--202--with our biggest hourly tally being 117 from 10-11. The Ancient Murrelet flight was not nearly so charismatic as the loon flight; often, the Ancients fly at kelpline, but today, most of them were so far out they were barely recognizable. We had 139 Rhino Auklets today.

Other highlights: a beautiful Black-legged Kittiwake that I picked up during a rare solo moment at the count. It was such a pretty bird that I was like "man, I wish there was someone here to appreciate it with me" and then I heard tripod legs sliding out--Kai got to appreciate the kittiwake too. Shortly after the kittiwake, despite a mad scramble rife with mishaps, Kai also successfully photographed the Royal Tern that's become a Seawatch regular this week. We saw it twice today. I say it, but Bill had 2 Royals in Monterey today, so who knows how many we've actually got right now. Bill also ran to the Seawatch today, as part of a self-inflicted birding full-length marathon. Seawatch provided Ancient Murrelet and American Kestrel for the marathon list...

Tubenose diversity continues to be low, but 2 Black-footed Albatross appearances were nice. We heard that Monterey Whalewatching had a Laysan from one of their boats today--sure would like one at Seawatch.

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/439463

December 5

Weather: At Pt. Pinos, the morning started, once again, with moderate NNE winds; following the pattern of the last week or so, these winds dropped off and switched to light west towards the end of the count. It was a sunny day with minimal swell and good visibility. At the outer buoy, wind at dawn was NNE at ~12 knots. It switched to W ~6 knots at 1300 and had built to W ~12 knots at sunset. Pressure remained high: 30.17 at dawn to 30.20 at 0900, then falling to 30.11 at count's end.

We had a really enjoyable loon flight this morning from 0700-0900. The volume wasn't full-bore Pinos loon insanity, but these two consecutive thousand-hours featured perfect light on flocks of at least a few dozen passing close in front of the seawatch. I think a lot of us Pinos people take this for granted, but it's so nice to have a seawatch site that both has good light all day AND has a relatively close flight. It's certainly not the case in other places I've watched and counted... We ended the day with 2918 Pacifics and 176 Red-throats, and we also crossed the 10,000 mark for Red-throated Loon for the season today.

Loon hour also brought another nice murre push (492); we counted 834 total today, along with 12 Rhinoceros Auklets and 35 Ancient Murrelets.

The Surf Scoter flight continues to trickle past: 303 today; the/a Royal Tern continues to make appearances -- we saw it fly out of the bay this morning, and it joined a big scrum just offshore the Seawatch this afternoon. The scrum was pretty fun, actually -- there were plenty of Glaucous-winged, Thayer's, Herring, and Short-billed Gulls amongst the California/Western/Heermann's conglomerate -- and Great Egrets, a Great Blue Heron, and some deft American Crows went tidepooling and got in on the inshore part of the anchovy feast. We noticed that a lot of birds looked comically pot-bellied after the scrum broke up...

A CBS newsman turned up this afternoon to do a piece on the king tides. I'm not sure if anything I said will make it to the news: I'm no expert on king tides, and I talked about what I DO know (Seawatch, duh), before the conversation was fortuitously diverted to Don Roberson.

We had our first identifiable jaeger in several days, a Pomarine, and also had two Black-vented Shearwater sightings.

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/439092