Seawatch Report - Nov 5, 2026
Weather: The wind stayed west overnight; at sunrise, it was still registering a little over 20 knots at the outer buoy, but at Pt. Pinos, it was calm, and stayed calm for most of the day. Out at the buoy, the wind dropped to <10 knots at 9:30 AM and was back up to ~20 knots NNW at 2PM, where it stayed till sunset. Pressure at sunrise was 30.07; it rose to 30.13 at ~10AM and had dropped back to 30.05 by sunset. The water temperature was 68.
Overall, it was a quiet day at the count; despite thinking about the tropicbird during every single scan, the tropicbird did not make a reappearance. Will I think about the tropicbird during every single scan for the rest of Seawatch? Probably.
I did get another Pt. Pinos bird, though! During the 10:00 hour, all the birds on the beach and rocks flushed. A little searching of the sky revealed a juvenile Bald Eagle that was far more interested in continuing north across the bay towards Santa Cruz than it was about the shore ruckus it created beneath.
I figured a Bald Eagle was a pretty good sighting for the Seawatch, given that I've now spent, cumulatively, about half a year at Seawatch, and up to that point, no Bald Eagles had come by. I opened my phone to share the sighting on our WhatsApp group, and was delighted to see that Karen had seen it about 2 minutes earlier ~ a half-mile south of Pinos, and - 50 minutes before that - Cooper had seen the same individual ~10 miles south of Pinos, at Mal Paso headed our way! So cool!
Other fun landbird sightings today: a Common Raven over the golf course, the Tropical Kingbird (whose daily rhythm seems to be an early morning appearance before departing for parts unknown for the rest of the day), 4 Red Crossbills (flyovers, type 2), and a good Merlin show. We even had a very dark Merlin that Kai's photos have revealed to be a good candidate for a "black" Merlin, which hails from the Pacific Northwest.
As far as seabirds go, the Surf Scoter flight was pretty minimal today: 463, with the 4PM-5PM hour bringing the most. We had 24 Brant and our first-of-season Cackling Goose. Jaegers continue to put on a good show: 3 Pomarines and 1 Parasitic today. A Black-legged Kittiwake and 4 Royal Terns were Larid highlights; for alcids we had 3 Rhinoceros Auklets, 2 Cassin's Auklets, 2 Marbled Murrelets, and 106 Common Murres.
The loon flight continues at a trickle: 30 Red-throats, 82 Pacifics, and 25 Common Loons today. Black-vented Shearwaters continue to have a prominent presence in the bay; we had 804 today (with 493 of these in the 6AM-7AM hour). Our only other tubenoses were 2 Short-tailed Shearwaters and 7 Northern Fulmars.
Shorebird highlights of the day included a flock of 27 Marbled Godwits and a flock (7!) of Wilson's Snipe.
-Alison Vilag
See the full trip report here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/592224
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