Opening Day of Seawatch!
I woke at about 3:00 AM to hard rain on the roof and decided to not go back to sleep. This was in part because I am still fully on EST, in part also because I was excited for the opening day of the 11th annual Pt. Pinos Seawatch - a birder's holiday. The rain had mostly quit by first light, leaving in its wake rainbows that persisted for most of the morning. A good omen, we think. The skies continued to clear as the day went on; visibility was very good, and winds were light, going west in the afternoon.
It was a gentle opening day, for which I was grateful: sometimes, it takes a minute for the tubenose training wheels to come off, for the fine motor skills of putting speedy sky specks in the spotting scope to get retuned, and for the organization of which species to which clicker (and which clicker in which pocket) to be reestablished.
We had a steady Surf Scoter flight (2944 total) that peaked in the last full hour of the count (4-5PM, 515 SUSC); most hours brought >200. With plenty of good eyes to sift the flocks, we found a nice assortment of non Surf Scoters: Blue-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Northern Pintail, a Redhead, Greater Scaup, Lesser Scaup, Black and White-winged scoters, and a female Long-tailed Duck!
The phalarope composition featured a higher density of Red-necked Phalaropes (79) than I've experienced at Pt. Pinos - usually, by the time Seawatch starts, it is almost exclusively Red Phalaropes. The tern composition is of note, too: more Royals (at least 8) with the Elegants (106) than in my previous seasons. Karen also photographed a Common Tern that the rest of us managed to miss, since we were gawking at the jaeger escort that often accompanies terns in the bay. We had 5 Parasitics and 4 Pomarines today.
The current alcid presence is sad - literally, as there is a Common Murre die-off underway (does this have something to do with the 68-degree water?!). We had just 60 murres, a handful of Cassin's and Rhinoceros Auklets, 2 Ancient Murrelets, and a Marbled Murrelet. Tubenose numbers and diversity are low, too - though just a couple weeks ago, most the world's Black-vented Shearwaters were in Monterey Bay (!), today we had just 96, and there are reports of BVSH already as far north as Humboldt County. The only other tubenose today was Northern Fulmar (40). Continuing this theme is the comparatively low numbers of Brandt's Cormorants, Western and Heermann's Gulls, and Brown Pelicans. These might not be the flashiest species we monitor at Seawatch, but I am grateful for the data we've collected over the years. The bay feels empty of cormorants and, objectively, we can say that the number of Brandt's Cormorants tallied today was less than 3% of the number of Brandt's Cormorants tallied on Seawatch's opening day last year...
It seems that loons haven't really begun to move in numbers: just 10 Red-throats, 23 Pacifics, and 15 Commons today.
On the non-seabird front, the Tropical Kingbird (trying, with dubious success, to eat rain beetles!) was a highlight. Brian found Evening Grosbeaks and an Eastern Phoebe near Seawatch - but not so near that we could see them from Seawatch... On the non-avian front, the humpbacks put on a great show today; lots of breaches, and even a surprise double breach during an otherwise ordinary scope pan...
I am so happy to be back, and to have a front row seat to the effects an El Nino this strong will have on species numbers and composition; the 10 years of data we have already will hopefully lend understanding to an event of this magnitude. Thank you for once again having me, and for making the first day of Seawatch feel like the most joyous holiday I've celebrated in quite some time. Can't wait to share another season and the surprises that will come with you all.
-Alison Vilag
See the full trip report here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/591035
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