The crescendoing Surf Scoter flight dominated migration at Pt. Pinos today. We're already at over 14,200 for the season, which is just a week in! The daily tally was 4034, with two hours bringing us more than a thousand individuals: 1000 (n=1215 scoters) and 1600 (n=1239 scoters). The most-traveled flight line seemed to be the one that wraps around the coast; however, particularly in late afternoon and early evening we did have a few sizeable flocks that were cutting the bay to the west of Pt. Pinos, which seems to happen more frequently when winds are light, as they were today. The largest flocks were >200 birds, and a few other duck species--Greater and Lesser Scaup and Green-winged Teal--were mixed in. My favorite mixed scoter flock of the day contained 3 female Black Scoters.
Scoters aside, it was a fairly quiet day at the count. We had just 152 Common Murres (and 2 Rhinoceros Auklets), low numbers of tubenoses (a few Sooty Shearwaters and Northern Fulmars and 1 Pink-footed Shearwater, generally quite distant), and the loon flight still hasn't started yet--we logged 152 Red-throats and 74 Pacifics today, as well as 44 Commons.
Around noon, a terrific stream of Heermann's Gulls flowed past the count to a scrum near the buoy. There wasn't a lot happening with the count at the time, so I counted the gulls by 10s and ended up with just over 2700. I only saw one juvenile within this flock, though, and have seen hardly any juveniles since the count started this year.
Two Black-legged Kittiwakes were probably my pick for the avian highlight of the day. However, the best part of today's count was around sunrise, when a humpback and (large) calf breached repeatedly near the buoy. Just seeing this would have been a delight, but light winds and minimal swell meant that the morning was so quiet that we could HEAR the splash. And--we could FEEL the shock wave resonating through the ground where we stood. I was in the company of several dedicated Pt. Pinos seawatchers this morning--people who have witnessed many special happenings here--and we all acknowledged that our morning whalewatching would be something we'd remember forever.
See the full checklist here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/290883
-Alison Vilag
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