Weather: Overnight - moderate onshore winds that had calmed by count's start, and light rain that had also ceased by dawn. The first couple hours of the count were encumbered by fog which rendered it impossible to see to the buoy at times. When that cleared, we had a few mostly sunny and mostly windless hours. By 1300 whitecaps were whipping up to our west. When the wind reached us, tubenose detections increased, as did murre and loon flight. The wind built through to sunset, registering 17.5 kt (WNW) at the outer buoy and roughly 10.5 kt at Pt. Pinos.
Flight: For the second day in a row, Cackling Geese (n=153) were moving more prominently than Surf Scoters (n=92) were. Most of the Cackling Goose number comes from a flock of 145 that was bay-crossing to the northeast during the 0800 hour.
There was a strong movement of Common Murres during the afternoon hours, with our peak hourly count (n=622) coming from the 1300 hour. Our cumulative total for the day was 1897, and we did see a few (n=14) Rhinoceros Auklets.
Within the substantial numbers of Heermann's and California gulls (there were some terrific scrums off the Point today!) are a fair number of more northern species (Glaucous-winged, Thayer's, Short-billed, American Herring), and Brian picked out and photographed a first-cycle bird that seems to be a good Vega Gull candidate. We also had a scattering of Bonaparte's Gulls offshore, and the season's first Black-legged Kittiwake in a scrum just off the point.
Loon movement hasn't opened up yet, as is expected. We had 185 Pacifics and 55 Red-throats.
The west winds provided us with more regular tubenose sightings: Pink-footed and Sooty Shearwaters and Northern Fulmars, and Brian briefly got on a distant albatross sp. The seasonal arrival of Black-vented Shearwaters happened during the afternoon, which made me quite happy.
The day's less-common highlights were topped by a flyover WHITE-FACED IBIS (only the second record during the annual Seawatch period, per eBird); Kai's catch of a Wilson's Snipe and a dawn Black-crowned Night-Heron also deserve mention.
You can view the full list of birds here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/289797
- Alison Vilag
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