A rainy Thursday

Waking to wind and rain this morning made me happy: it's been some time since we've had weather at the Seawatch. Though it would have been even better if the wind would have been stronger, it was still a very fun day at Pt. Pinos, with a lot more movement than, in particular, the two prior days.

We'd barely made it into the first hour when I started to open my mouth to say how the conditions felt good for a storm-petrel and, before the words got out, Brian got on a Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel! It was the first of four we had that hour, all near the kelp-line and flying out of the bay. One of these was incorporating frequent dynamic glides into its flight, which was so fun to see.

The alcid flight started strong too, with our peak Common Murre (3158 for day) and Rhinoceros Auklet (1702 for day) movement occuring from sunrise-0900, but remaining fairly steady through to the end of the count... We also had 2 Cassin's Auklets, which have proven very scarce this season, 4 Marbled Murrelets, and 115 Ancient Murrelets.

We had a higher-volume loon flight: 313 Red-throats and 1740 Pacifics (peak movement 0800-1000, with most Red-throats moving high past Pt. Pinos and most Pacifics cutting the bay distantly .

We saw Black-footed Albatross 26 times today, which was splendid. The most we saw in an hour was 5. We also had 35 Northern Fulmars, 4 Pink-footed Shearwaters, and 4 Short-tailed Shearwaters.

Aside from a quick rain squall in the 1500 hour, today was dry, mostly cloudy, and had moderate west winds. Visibility was not a limiting factor, and the swell was moderately large.

-Alison Vilag

https://ebird.org/tripreport/300516