Today was another windless, clear day at the Seawatch. In fact, we were talking about how it felt like there was no weather anywhere nearby. I guess we're all hungry for a good northwest blow to push another run of seabirds into the Bay...
Surf Scoters were, once again, the dominant migrant at the count: We tallied 1929, with the busiest part of the flight falling between 0700 and 1000; the peak hour was 0800 (n=636). A good number of today's flocks, like they were yesterday (another calm day), were cutting across the Bay to the southwest of Pt. Pinos. I also had a Redhead this morning--our first of the season for this scarce (but annually recorded) duck.
Alcids and tubenoses were sparse today. We had single digits of Rhinoceros Auklets and just 147 Common Murres, despite the minimal swell creating optimal conditions for detecting the "smallcids" (auklets, murrelets). The only non-fulmar tubenose was a single Sooty Shearwater.
There were an incredible amount of Bonaparte's Gulls foraging over the bay today; my highest single-scan count yielded 444, and of the birds near enough to age, it seemed like the ration of adults to juveniles was fairly even.
The loon flight is slowly picking up: we had 403 Red-throats, 112 Pacifics, and 18 Commons today; peak loon hour was 0800-0900. Also, looking at the season so far, we hit the thousand mark for both RTLO (1026) and PALO (1036) today. There was a small movement of RTLO and PALO flying into the bay during the late afternoon. As this flightline is quite distant and north of the count, these loons were likely coming in off the ocean and were not included in the day's tally, as we only record loons heading out of the bay.
The wind at the outer buoy was calm last night and built to ~11 kt from the NNE this morning, dropping and switching to light west during the afternoon. It was calm at the count site all day. The pressure dropped from 30.18 overnight to 30.04 at count's end. Swell was minimal and visibility was uninhibited, albeit a bit smoky.
See the full checklist here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/291087
 -Alison Vilag
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