Seawatch Report - Nov 13, 2026
WHAT A WEEK AT SEAWATCH! Since my last day off, we've had a Clark's Nutcracker, a Golden Eagle, a few sunrise visits from the Tropical Kingbird, Red Crossbills, a Short-eared Owl that we shared with a visiting Ed Yong, double digits of Pomarine Jaegers, near-daily Marbled Murrelets, and 15 boobies, 13 of which were TODAY.
As I was leaving for the Seawatch this morning, Catherine gave me a heads-up that our usual parking spot was closed since the surf was forecast to be wild. Not a problem, as Shannon had suggested a couple contingency plans yesterday evening. We opted to set up in the pullout that's across the street and uphill from the count. The Monterey cypress there would shelter from the southwest wind, we'd have a little height on the swells, and we'd hopefully have less vehicle traffic than we do at our other weather backup site, Crespi Pond.
It was warm, dry, and fairly calm at sunrise, and I made sure to intentionally appreciate this, knowing it would not last the whole day. Though the flightline was a little more distant from this new vantage, I appreciated the height, and also that the Point was less of an obstruction, i.e. harder to lose interesting birds behind. Though loons and scoters were a drip (not even a trickle!), we spotted a Cocos Booby less than 2 hours into the count. "Where is it in relation to the breaching whale?" Greg asked -- something you only say at Pinos. Everyone saw the booby; everyone was happy; a double rainbow came before the rain; "Loon between the two rainbows!"; something else you only say at Pinos.
The loon and the booby flew out of the bay, the rainbows traded places with rain, and most of my companions decided they had other things to do. Andrew stayed, and Andrew spotted our second Cocos Booby of the day, also flying out of the bay, right as Karen arrived. Karen, like me, believes in rain and strong south. Yesterday afternoon, scouring the swells for storm-petrels, we realized that we've looked enough at this ocean to know that when this ocean looks a certain way, we expect certain good birds; today, the ocean looked that way. To find bad-weather birds, you need to be a bad-weather birder. That's seawatching.
The bad weather showed up, and so did Kai. Kai spotted two close Cocos Boobies--an adult female and a juvenile--flying together. We were so astounded that we didn't even realize that Ashley, visiting for the weekend from LA, had joined us right at that moment. Ashley, like Karen, got a welcome booby--things you only say at Pinos.
Then the weather got really bad. We couldn't see, and if not for the Monterey cypress windbreak it would have been hard to stand, but we stood outside anyway and kept ourselves warm by reveling at the savagely beautiful waves, by belly-laughing at the expressions of people trying to figure out our activities, or maybe our sanity, as they drove by. A juvenile Western Gull provided great entertainment, too--from its behavior, we had to wonder if, perhaps, this was the worst storm in its life thus far. Its parents attempted to escort it to an iceplant windbreak, but the juvie kept getting blown sideways, making such sad calls. Fortunately it made it to refuge. Municipal trucks drove by with limbs and tree-tops and "flooded" and "road closed" signs. I made my own flood when I emptied the hood on my raincoat, fortunately into the truck bed and not down my neck. It would have been much more somber had I been out there alone, but having friends to stand out there with me (and other friends who dropped off warm tasty care packages!) made all the difference. Thank you.
The rain suddenly abated at about 3:00, and the boobies started again. We had 3 distant boobies (probably Cocos) plunge-diving together out on the horizon; we had some boobies that were close enough to identify as Cocos; a Brant flight with big messy flocks popped up, and a few jaegers came by. In a period of about thirty seconds, we got distracted from a mess of Brant by a close booby, and then from the close booby by two Pomarines flying in tandem. Things that only happen at Pinos...
It was disappointing when sunset came tonight, since it felt like there were still exciting birds out there to be seen. As I write this at 10PM, the wind is still blowing west, rain squalls are still coming through, and I can't help but wonder if we'll get our first-of-season storm-petrels tomorrow...
Today's highlights:
-533 Brant, i.e. Storm Geese. I've had seasons that have granted fewer Brant than today's total, and this is the second-highest daily count I've had here (behind 714 on 26 November 2022).
-329 Surf Scoters and 1 Black Scoter
-6 Red Phalaropes
-1 Parasitic, 4 Pomarine, and 4 jaeger sp.
-3 Rhinoceros Auklets, 3 Cassin's Auklets, and 22 Common Murres
-8 Elegant Terns and 3 Royal Terns
-1 Red-necked Grebe
-18 Red-throated Loons, 96 Pacific Loons, and 2 Common Loons
-2 Northern Fulmars, 2 Pink-footed Shearwaters, and 495 Black-vented Shearwaters
-7 Cocos Boobies and 6 booby sp. (none of these unidentified boobies were suspected of being non-Cocos)
Weather today at the outer buoy: at sunrise, wind was 19.5 knots from the south and built to 25 knots at 9AM, then 29 knots at 11 AM. It went west at 1, dropping to 15.5 knots, and it stayed around there for the rest of the count. The pressure at sunrise was 29.66; it dropped to 29.59 at 12:30PM and rose back to 29.67 at sunset. I think this was lower pressure than we ever recorded in 2025, but perhaps I'm still traumatized by the full three weeks of pressure that never dropped below 30.02. The water temperature was 67.3. -Alison Vilag
See the full trip report here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/594948
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