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