WOW! What a day! A nor'easter was passing off the coast, bringing strong rain and winds overnight, and it was still in full effect when I arrived to the Seawatch this morning. Just the walk from the car to the shack was difficult, with 30+ mph winds and rain in the face. Visibility was poor, but as it lightened up a bit, we saw a good number of birds flying by, many of them over the jetty and beach! Several scoter flocks even flew behind the shack and over some houses, which is practically unheard of, as most scoter make a sharp turn at the jetty to stay over water! Even a Common Eider, a Black-legged Kittiwake, and a Parasitic Jaeger flew over the beach, quite close to the shack!
On top of the good birds, the waves were quite extreme! Huge waves, probably over 10 feet in height, were crashing over the jetty. As high tide approached, the waves came up under the shack and took our deck on a bit of a ride down the beach, as well as two of our window panels! Lucky they didn't get swept out to sea and were later retrieved. Even two of the concrete barriers up on the jetty were knocked off of the jetty! It was quite a sight!
After a pretty busy morning, the flight shut down for the rest of the day, more or less, and wasn't helped by periods of rain and fog. One nice surprise, however, was a flyby Marbled Godwit heading south down the beach.
Also worth mentioning was that there was a good proportion of Surf to Black Scoter, being about 50:50 for the day, and there were quite a lot of loons, especially in the morning. A slower day than I expected, but not too slow! There many peak days ahead!
Check out our totals here: http://trektellen.org/count/view/1747/20181027
Cheers,
David
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