November 5 - Storm Petrels

One of several Black Storm-petrels just beyond the rocks

Weather: At Pt. Pinos, the day started fairly calm and mostly cloudy. Enough sky was clear, however, that we caught the moon setting into the ocean to our west as the sky to our east turned red. There were many rainbows today. The wind started to pick up from the south around 0800; some of the gusts were substantial, but we never had to hunker in behind a vehicle. The wind dropped off again by late afternoon, and though it looked very rainy over towards Santa Cruz, we only got a few sprinkles at the Seawatch. Visibility was a little rough in the morning: the air seemed very wet. At the outer buoy, it was blowing from the SE at 25 knots at dawn. The wind remained in this range until 1500, when it dropped to 12 knots. Pressure at dawn was 30.01, and pressure rose throughout the day to 30.16 at sunset. There is a substantial storm offshore; last night a BIG weather system was rotating counterclockwise around the north Pacific, impacting the central California coast up to southeast Alaska. I got to Seawatch today not knowing if I should look for Horned Puffins or if I should look for frigatebirds--it was a hard weather system to get a read on, but I knew that something unexpected would probably pass Seawatch.

We like northwest winds at Pt. Pinos, but in the four years I've counted here, I've noticed that boobies and storm-petrels turn up more often than not after strong south. Well, we had an EPIC storm-petrel day at Seawatch: we had 44 storm-petrels of three species, and we saw storm-petrels within every full hour of the count. That's ten hours of storm-petrels! These all were heading out of the bay at varying distances, from binocular-range birds at the kelpline to ones at the horizon line. We even saw an Ashy pop up in the same field of view as an arcing Black-footed Albatross: where else but Pinos can you stand on land and watch this?!

The storm-petrel breakdown: 2 Leach's, 27 Ashy, 9 Black (prior to today, just four total had been recorded during Seawatch!), and 6 unidentified storm-petrels. In regard to other tubenoses, we had 1 Black-footed Albatross, 1 unidentified albatross, 31 Northern Fulmars, and 6 Sooty Shearwaters.

Our "regular" seawatch birds were pretty slim today--not surprising on a day with very strong winds from the direction that migratory birds are trying to get. We had just 167 Surf Scoters, 35 Red-throated Loons, 56 Pacific Loons, and 3 Common Loons; 46 Brant--a "seagoose" we see here more often when the weather's bad--were nice.

Alcid diversity and numbers were up today, with most movement happening from dawn-0800. 222 Rhinoceros Auklets, 28 Cassin's Auklets, 3 Marbled Murrelets, 1 Pigeon Guillemot, 384 Common Murres.

Other highlights today: a gorgeous SABINE'S GULL Kai spotted--always a great bird during Seawatch season; 2 Parasitic Jaegers; 2 Red-necked Grebes; our first Band-tailed Pigeon flock of the season; a Peregrine Falcon stooping on a Black Turnstone.

Tonight, I'm going to bed feeling like I went to storm-petrel school--during the last hour of the count, I spotted a distant Black that, this morning, I would not have been able to confidently identify at that range. I'm going to bed with tired eyes: storm-petrels are easier to lose in the troughs than they are to find, and winnowing them from the waves involves a different type of looking. And I am going to bed very happy: any day with a storm-petrel at Seawatch is a great day, let alone 10 hours of 44 storm-petrels shared with so many Seawatch friends. Often after busy migration days at Seawatch, I see scoters or murres when I close my eyes in bed. Tonight, I'll probably keep seeing storm-petrels...

-Alison Vilag

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/tripreport/429842