Avalon Seawatch - December 5, 2011

[Sunrise from the north end of Avalon this morning. Photo by Tom Reed.]

Today's flight past the seawatch was quite modest, and was actually one of the lightest I've seen since early-October. However, there were still plenty of interesting things to see. Among the day's goodies were five Razorbills, three Parasitic Jaegers and three Canvasbacks. A small whale might've been the coolest sighting of the day, seen briefly this evening on two occasions when it surfaced just beyond the bar. I didn't get a good enough look to identify it, but it appeared to be about 15' long and was dark gray in color.

In other news, Red-throated Loons finally dropped below the 1,000-mark today, ending an impressive streak of four digit tallies that lasted for 18 days. Loon totals for those past 18 days piled up to a remarkable 73,857 individuals, representing 91% of the entire season's total. Amazingly, the previous 18 days also produced a higher RTLO total than any other entire season in Seawatch history. That's a lot of loons!

Tomorrow will finally bring an end to the freakishly springlike conditions of late, with rain showers and a westerly(?) breeze in the offing. We'll see what surprises await.


Surf Scoter - 357
White-winged Scoter - 13
Black Scoter - 254
dark-winged scoter - 36
Long-tailed Duck - 13
Red-breasted Merganser - 10
Red-throated Loon - 827
Common Loon - 2
Horned Grebe - 3
Northern Gannet - 742
Double-crested Cormorant - 4
Laughing Gull - 22
Bonaparte's Gull - 209
Ring-billed Gull - 39
Herring Gull - 20
Great Black-backed Gull - 10
Forster's Tern - 6
Parasitic Jaeger - 3
Razorbill - 5

(Total = 2,578)

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