Well, Seawatch season has most certainly arrived! After a steady movement of a diverse lot of birds throughout the morning, including the season firsts of Pomarine Jaeger and Bufflehead, the Scoter floodgates opened up. The first seven hours of the day featured the passage of several hundred Scoters per hour (breaking a thousand by the seventh), and then during the the following three hours over 8,600 individuals passed by the Seawatch on their way south.
Mixed Duck flocks, which are one of the highlights at Avalon, were in abundance for most of the day, with the list of species tagging along with Scoter flocks including: Ruddy Duck (twice!), Blue-winged Teal (getting late in the season for them at Avalon), Green-winged Teal (Almost always the most frequent tag-along species), both Lesser and Greater Scaup, Northern Pintail, and Wood Duck.
Common Loons and Northern Gannets put on a nice showing for the first few hours of the day, and almost 2,000 of the latter had passed when all was said and done.
22,523 Total Migrants counted.
Complete eBird list (with Seawatch Count birds in bold):
Location: Avalon Seawatch
Observation date: 10/20/10
Notes: Winds variable out of the west all day. Rain for most of the
afternoon, and relatively heavy later on, but the Scoters moved basically
throughout.
Number of species: 54
Brant (Atlantic) 15
Wood Duck 19
American Wigeon 3
Blue-winged Teal 1
Northern Pintail 32
Green-winged Teal 43
Greater Scaup 5
Lesser Scaup 4
Surf Scoter 7943
White-winged Scoter 13
Black Scoter 5876
Surf/Black Scoter 1906
Bufflehead 1
Red-breasted Merganser 4
Ruddy Duck 2
duck sp. 13
Red-throated Loon 3
Common Loon 43
Northern Gannet 1950
Double-crested Cormorant 4374
Great Cormorant 1
Great Blue Heron 4
Osprey 3
Bald Eagle 1
American Kestrel 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
Black-bellied Plover 2
Semipalmated Plover 14
Greater Yellowlegs 1
Ruddy Turnstone 1
Sanderling X
Dunlin 6
peep sp. 1
Bonaparte's Gull 2
Laughing Gull 69
Ring-billed Gull 43
Herring Gull 35
Great Black-backed Gull 29
Caspian Tern 2
Forster's Tern 26
Royal Tern 61
Pomarine Jaeger 1
Rock Pigeon X
Mourning Dove X
Downy Woodpecker 1
Tree Swallow 500
Red-breasted Nuthatch 2
American Robin X
Northern Mockingbird 2
European Starling X
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 25
Palm Warbler 1
Savannah Sparrow 1
Northern Cardinal 1
Red-winged Blackbird 2
House Finch 10
American Goldfinch 5
House Sparrow X
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