What a day out at the Seawatch! At dawn, not anticipating much movement with the forecasted strong south winds and precipitation, I decided that any dry hour at the count would be a triumph, but the count delivered so much more than dry hours. (And, in fact, it did not begin raining steadily until the last hour of the count.)
As it became light enough to see, it seemed fairly quiet, but then there was a Rhinoceros Auklet... a few Rhinos...a few dozen Rhinos...and then, suddenly, the entire bay seemed to explode in flocks of Rhinoceros Auklets and looking anywhere through your scope would divulge several dozen flocks at varying distances all flying out of the bay, which was a very cool scene to take in, juxtaposed with the numerous humpback blows.
This morning turned out to be one of the biggest alcid flights I have eve seen at Pt. Pinos: 7137 Rhinoceros Auklets (peak hour 0700: 5450!!!), 1630 Common Murres (peak hour also 0700), an absolutely wonderful Ancient Murrelet flight (193!), 4 Marbled Murrelets, 3 Scripp's Murrelets, and I'm sure something epic that we missed in all the excitement of trying to keep up with the Rhinos... the Ancient flight was particularly fun, for by then I'd sent out an SOS to the Monterey Birders Whatsapp, quite a crowd had assembled, and we had this collective goal of getting triple digits of Ancient Murrelets in one hour. It went down to the wire--with 6 minutes to go in the hour, we were still 7 Ancients short--but Kai saved the day and spotted a flock that carried us past our goal.
It is interesting to me how the composition of the alcid flight changes here from day to day. Sometimes there are loads of murres but very few Rhinos. Today there were loads of Rhinos and moderate amounts of murres. All I can say with confidence is that I love the sunset hour of the count, when I'm standing out there wondering what the next day will bring, but generally having no idea of what that will be.
The rarity of the day was a Wood Duck, flying alone at moderate distance. It was a male; the chinstrap facial markings visible. Other highlights were an adult Pomarine that still had its spooners and 2 Red-necked Grebes.
Surf Scoters were scarce: 59. The loon flight was moderate: 109 Red-throats and 2999 Pacifics (peak hour 1295 at 0800). Fortunately, the ceiling was so low today that the loon flight was also low, which allowed us to get the alcid flight and the loon flight in the same field of view. This doesn't happen often.
Tubenoses were essentially nonexistent today: 3 Northern Fulmars and a dark, distant storm-petrel species.
- Alison Vilag
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