November 15

Weather: It was a fairly calm, drizzly day at Pt. Pinos, with minimal swell and somewhat restricted visibility. At the outer buoy, winds were light and variable until 1300, when they started picking up from the SSE, peaking at ~15.5 knots at 1500. Pressure dropped over the course of the day from 29.98 at dawn to 29.78 at sunset.

Birds: It was a fairly quiet day at Seawatch, in terms of volume, but it was, as always, a special day. There were some noteworthy marine mammal encounters: a fur seal "jug-handling" offshore, my first two gray whales of this year's seawatch, and a sea otter who cached her pup amongst the tidepool rocks just below the count site. There are an incredible amount of Northern Fulmars in the bay right now. Catherine did a horizon-horizon sweep, which took about twenty minutes, and clicked 121! It was not uncommon to have a half-dozen or so arcing through any given field of view over the course of the day. We also had a beautiful Common Loon flight. Often, the bulk of Common Loon movement at Pt. Pinos happens FAR to the east over Highway 1. You can hardly make them out at that distance. However, yesterday, a couple flocks flew directly over the Seawatch heading due south (this is different from the other loon species' flightlines). Our favorite flock was a loose, high line that stretched from Booby Rock (where the Nazca first hung out beyond Pt. Pinos last fall) to John Denver. It was as if a front of Common Loons passed over. Between 0700-100 big groups of Band-tailed Pigeons milled around high overhead. And there was an interesting, very dark juvenile Red-tailed Hawk that gave us a puzzle for a bit. Though most of my Seawatch companions left to go see the Moss Landing King Eider that was found this morning, they returned for the final drizzly hour, and that was a great morale boost.

We had just 507 Surf Scoters today. For alcids, we had 13 Rhinos, 1 Marbled Murrelet, 520 Common Murres, and 5 Ancient Murrelets. We had 91 Red-throated, 271 Pacifics, and 84 Common Loons. Northern Fulmar was our only tubenose today. Highlights: a Black-legged Kittiwake following a fishing boat on its way in, and 2 Red-necked Grebes that flew out of the bay together and quite close. There really were not many birds today! During the last hour of the count, we had only two Heermann's Gulls--usually, it's at least a couple hundred!

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/433059