It was a fun day today at the seawatch. Hardly any ducks were moving, but Red-throated Loons, Northern Gannets, and gulls put in good showings.
The gannet show was quite steady all day, with a few close looks but mostly distant birds moving quickly past. An impressive number of Laughing Gulls (258) passed today as well.
The bird of the day was a young male King Eider that was hanging out with the 13 Common Eiders that have been spending the past week or so by the jetty. Unfortunately, all of the eiders vanished in the middle of the morning, but I have hope that they will return tomorrow with the King in tow.
An eBird list of species detected follows, with counted migrants in bold:
4,617 migrants today.
Location: Avalon Seawatch
Observation date: 11/16/10
Number of species: 31
American Wigeon 10
Green-winged Teal 11
Greater Scaup 8
Lesser Scaup 20
King Eider 1
Common Eider 13
Surf Scoter 249
White-winged Scoter 17
Black Scoter 108
Surf/Black Scoter 10
Long-tailed Duck 12
Bufflehead 3
Red-breasted Merganser 10
Red-throated Loon 644
Common Loon 6
Northern Gannet 2918
Semipalmated Plover 8
Sanderling 2
Purple Sandpiper 1
Bonaparte's Gull 11
Laughing Gull 258
Ring-billed Gull 96
Herring Gull 204
Great Black-backed Gull 11
Royal Tern 5
Parasitic Jaeger 5
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
Northern Mockingbird 1
American Pipit 1
Song Sparrow 1
White-throated Sparrow 1
Dark-eyed Junco 1
House Sparrow 15
