2025 Pt. Pinos Seawatch - 20 Nov

Weather: It rained off and on at Seawatch today until early afternoon, when the wind--previously calm--picked up to a pretty brisk NW wind. Visibility was fairly limited during the biggest parts of the morning push: it was frustrating to have steady presence of dark shearwaters at a distance where the distortion was so bad the birds were impossible to identify. The swell was moderate. At the outer buoy, the wind was NE at 6 knots at dawn. It switched to NW at noon, building to W at 19 knots by 1500. Pressure at dawn was 30.01; it fell slightly to 29.96 at the count's end.

Birds: The dominant movement of the morning was a big flight of Rhinoceros Auklets--a species whose densest flights seem to coincide with rain here. We tallied 2830 in the 0800-0900 hour, when low flocks of 15-40+ were flying out of the bay from buoy distance all the way to the horizon. Our daily tally was 3363. We also had 578 Common Murres and 20 Ancient Murrelets.

The Surf Scoter flight seems to be tapering--for now. We had just 640 (and 1 Black Scoter) today.

We had 385 Red-throated Loons, 2599 Pacific Loons, and 15 Common Loons; in regard to the PALOs, 1000-1600 were all triple-digit hours, and this sort of steady movement continues into the afternoon, it often signals a nice flight the following morning. We shall see!

For what feels like the first time in days, we had shearwaters, including a wonderfully close Short-tailed that gave us a look that lasted several minutes during the last hour of the count. We had 2 Sooty, 5 Short-tailed, and 63 SOSH/STSH, and there continue to be many, many Northern Fulmars in the bay.

Other highlights today included a Pomarine Jaeger, 11 Black-legged Kittiwakes (again, most of these in the late afternoon count hours), and our first Forster's Terns (2) of the season.

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/434443