This past week had many highs and lows! First, let's start off with a list of our total birds for each day (both northbound and southbound):
October 31: 29,691
November 1: 16,986
November 2: 3,808
November 3: 2,787
November 4: 25,642
As you can see, we had three busy days and two slow days. October 31st had an excellent movement of scoters, with 16,000 Black Scoters and 5,600 Surf Scoter. 2700 cormorants and 1700 gannets made things a bit hectic at times as I was trying to keep track of flocks of scoters, cormorant, a stream of gannets, and miscellaneous gulls and ducks all at the same time.
November 1st was a quite a bit slower, but good sized flocks of cormorants really bumped up the total number for the day, with over 4000 counted. 8600 Black Scoters and 1700 Surf Scoters kept the pace up from the previous day. 31 Brown Pelicans was certainly a sight to see, and they were all adult birds, which was quite interesting.
Friday, November 2nd was dominated mostly by northbound scoters (over 2000 of them), with very little active migration of anything southbound. However, a notable push of terns in the evening was definitely the most interested event of the day, with 146 Royal Terns and 224 Forster's Terns tallied that day.
November 3rd was even slower, and there is honestly not much to report! A female Common Eider hung out off the jetty between 7th and 8th Street for the whole day with a large group of scoters, much to the delight of our visitors. A somewhat late Osprey and another 142 Forster's Terns were also notable.
Sunday, November 4th picked up considerable again, but started off quite disappointingly with most birds being very far offshore. However, the north winds swung around to east by noon, and the flight not only increased in intensity but was also considerably closer to shore, with many flocks of scoters often coming right over the jetty. Nearly 12,000 Black Scoter and 5000 Surf Scoter were clicked throughout the day. A good diversity of dabbling ducks and diving ducks, as well as a nice push of 457 Red-throated Loons really rounded out this very good day.
The Seawatch is at it's peak for scoters now, so make sure to come on out soon! The loons and gannets have really started picking up as well and will probably peak in the next 3 weeks!
Good birding,
David
No comments:
Post a Comment