November 14

Weather: The early morning hours were foggy and thick with salt spray because of the high tide and storm-spawned swells; we could barely see to the buoy for several hours. Visibility improved by afternoon, however, and was so good at sunset that I could briefly see an albatross arcing out at the limits of where my scope reaches. It was calm at Pt. Pinos all day, sunny in the afternoon, and the swell was monumental, the sort that gives you sea legs on land if you look at it in the spotting scope for too long. At the outer buoy, winds were light and variable all morning, staying west at about 8 knots from 1400-sunset. Pressure rose from 29.88 at dawn to 29.95 at sunset.

Birds: It was quite quiet at the count today, with the highlight being an evening Black-legged Kittiwake. Often, our calm-day kittiwakes cruise by during the last couple hours of the count...

The Surf Scoter flight is greatly diminished from the last two days: just 810, today, with most movement in the morning. The loon flight is picking up, subtly: we had 203 Red-throats, 338 Pacifics, and 97 Commons--a good daily count for this latter species. Loon movement was strongest from Loon Hour (0700)-1000 today.

Alcids were very sparse today! Just 16 Rhinos, 1 Cassin's, 2 Pigeon Guillemots, 50 Common Murres, and 8 Ancient Murrelets.

Tubenose diversity was low: that sunset albatross sp., 19 Sooty Shearwaters, and 173 Northern Fulmars (the highest horizon-horizon count for the fulmars was 59).

A Pomarine Jaeger and a Red-necked Grebe were part of our less-common seabird contingent, and on the landbird front, we had a flock of 109 Band-tailed Pigeons milling around high above the Point during the morning.

For the last two days, there has been a marked increase in outbound Brown Pelicans, and yesterday evening, very high flocks of Heermann's Gulls were also flying out of the bay, which makes me wonder if they, too, are migrating.

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/432605