2025 Pt. Pinos Seawatch - 6 Nov

Weather: In terms of wind, it was calm at Seawatch today, but in terms of the Pacific Ocean, it was some of the wildest surf I've seen here. During high tide, waves were crashing over the highest parts of Pt. Pinos, and surf was raging up to within a few feet of the bench. The waves flushed all the kelp flies from the rocks--they took refuge on the green concrete block. At one point, fifteen Black Oystercatchers were huddled on the same bit of Pt. Pinos and managed to not bicker about their circumstances. (Typically, the two oystercatcher pairs have several territorial disagreements each day.) Visibility was frustrating: there were birds, but for most of the day we struggled to see them due to salt spray and fog; the last hour of the count was completely socked in... At the outer buoy, it was blowing 8 knots from the northeast at dawn. The wind dropped to 4 knots at 0900, switched to NNW at 1100, and built back to 15 knots by sunset. Always a bit confounding when we want the west wind to give us tubenoses, but instead it gives us fog that prevents us from seeing them... pressure at dawn was 30.22, at sunset 30.19

Birds: We had our first strong SURF SCOTER flight in several days, finishing with 1296 tallied, as well as 1 BLACK SCOTER. Two interesting notes about today's flocks: almost all individuals were females, and we noted a lot of flocks flying into the bay (per protocol, these are not counted.) Before the fog set in, there was some decent afternoon alcid movement: 118 RHINOCEROS AUKLETS, 284 COMMON MURRES. It was a good afternoon for loons--we had our first triple-digit PACIFIC LOON hour right before the fog came in, and we ended the day with 109 Red-throats, 338 Pacifics, and 14 Commons.

More storm-petrels!! In fact, by ordinary Seawatch standards, today was a spectacular storm-petrel day, with 1 Black and 3 Leach's, all essentially at kelpline distance. We're still a little spoiled by yesterday's forty-four storm-petrels, though, so today's storm-petrel show didn't feel as spectacular as it truly should have. We also had twenty Northern Fulmars, 10 Pink-footed Shearwaters (the first of this species for a couple days), and 6 Sooty Shearwaters.

Other highlights included 6 Parasitic and 1 Pomarine Jaeger, a Northern Harrier setting out over the bay, and four Common Ravens that caught our attention when they croaked overhead as they did a brief sightseeing flight above Pt. Pinos. This is the first time I've seen more than one raven from the Point, and per eBird, the previous high count was two...

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/430088