Avalon Seawatch, 27 November 2016

The seawatch today continued to show a slow flight of migrating seabirds.  The weather was mild and pleasant and the visibility was fantastic.  Bottlenose dolphins gave us a good show in the morning and they continued to be active throughout the day.  Black scoters flew by consistently all day in small flocks.  At the very end of the day we had a very nice push of red-throated loons.  In 5 minutes we had about 500 fly by, which doubled our count of red-throated loons for the whole day.

An exciting moment of the day was observing a group of 6 snow buntings hanging out on the jetty!  We have been seeing a small group of 3 snow buntings consistently for about 2 weeks, so it was exciting to see more of them around!

 The total number of birds counted today was 4,223 with red-throated loon, black scoter, and double-crested cormorants being the top species observed.  Below is the full set of data collected today.  Join us between 8th and 9th street in Avalon, everyday between sunrise and sunset.

Avalon Seawatch count for 11/27/2016
Species	Count today	Season total	Season maximum
			Count	Date(s)
American Oystercatcher	1	292	49	10/24/2016
Black Duck	17	1197	246	10/24/2016
Black Scoter	1203	158788	15583	11/24/2016
Brant	47	2330	305	11/23/2016
Bufflehead	1	3335	1803	11/21/2016
Common Eider	3	58	9	11/19/2016
Common Loon	1	1344	376	10/24/2016
Double-crested Cormorant	206	141470	10151	10/11/2016
Great Black-backed Gull	1	702	48	10/21/2016
Greater Scaup	2	584	101	11/5/2016
Green-winged Teal (American)	1	7212	1758	10/27/2016
Long-tailed Duck	1	260	144	11/22/2016
Northern Gannet	17	46852	6143	11/24/2016
Red-breasted Merganser	8	333	101	11/24/2016
Red-throated Loon	1363	47640	7293	11/24/2016
Ring-billed Gull	29	5762	1515	11/22/2016
scoter sp.	200	34403	6858	11/7/2016
Surf Scoter	479	84207	10310	11/1/2016
Surf/Black Scoter	643	29487	4115	11/1/2016