2025 Pt. Pinos Seawatch - 7 Nov

Weather: At the Point, it was a calm day. The swell was substantial, though somewhat diminished from yesterday, and visibility was generally pretty good, except from about 1400-1545, when the fog was so thick we couldn't even see the end of Pt. Pinos. At the outer buoy at dawn, winds were NNE at 4 knots. They switched to W at 1100, building to 12 knots by the count's end. Pressure at dawn was 30.18 and it fell to 30.03 by the count's end.

Birds: We had a modest loon flight this morning! 382 Red-throats and 381 Pacifics were tallied today, with the busiest loon hours being 0700-0900. I really was expecting a big Surf Scoter flight today: winds further north on the Pacific coast have finally become favorable for migration, but we still had just 313 pass by. A lone drake Redhead came by this afternoon: always a good bird at Seawatch!

It was a decent alcid day: 288 Rhinoceros (mostly from 0700-0900), a Cassin's Auklet, 2 Marbled Murrelets, and 285 Common Murres (mostly during the dawn and sunset hours).

Red Phalaropes were moving out of the bay today; we tallied 336.

The jaeger show (5 Parasitics and 3 Poms) was a fun watch, as always. There sure seem to be more Parasitics hanging around the bay than there have during my other seasons (perhaps, this coincides with the good amount of Elegant Terns that are still around!), and I'm digging it, though the terns and gulls sure don't seem to share my opinion...

And the storm-petrels keep going! Today's Leach's (1), Ashy (4), and Black (4) put us over FIFTY storm-petrels logged during Seawatch's first week. Scoters and storm-petrels occupy completely different levels of airspace at Pt. Pinos, so I guess it's a good thing the scoter flight is not happening right now--there's no way I could spend as much time fixated on the storm-petrel zone if high scoter flocks were blasting by... Bill even ran (yes, ran with his legs) from Seaside to see if he could get a storm-petrel on his running list. Hopefully, the Black Storm-Petrel he got gave him enough juice to make the return run somewhat painless...

Kai was on a boat that departed from Moss Landing today and had Black and Ashy Storm-Petrels... what a crazy week it's been for them in the bay!

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/430380