3-November-2008

November 10, 2008

Strong SE winds were kicking up in the morning and it was cloudy, but not many birds were migrating in front of the today’s storm. By noon, it started raining and by the end of the day, we’d received nearly an inch. This provided lots of necessary drinking water for next year. Hopefully we’ll get a lot more rain this winter.

The strong winds did bring one species in good numbers though. Today was the first day of Murre Madness. Once the murre parents have abandoned their young in late fall, wind events bring murre adults back in mass to the island. Today was the first day of this madness so only 1% of the breeding population returned to the island. Most of these birds were just sitting on the water near the island screaming “AAHHHH,” but a few actually landed on the backside of Sugarloaf.

The only migratory birds of note today were the Cackling Geese and the Black-vented Shearwaters.

Location: Southeast Farallon Island
Observation date: 11/3/08
Number of species: 31

Greater White-fronted Goose 1
Cackling Goose 37
Pacific Loon 5
Horned Grebe 1
Eared Grebe 25
Pink-footed Shearwater 13
Buller’s Shearwater 7
Black-vented Shearwater 22
Brown Pelican 392
Brandt’s Cormorant X
Pelagic Cormorant X
Peregrine Falcon (Continental) 2
Black Oystercatcher 49
Wandering Tattler 2
Whimbrel 6
Black Turnstone 29
Least Sandpiper 1
Red Phalarope 32
Western Gull X
California Gull 95
Herring Gull 2
Glaucous-winged Gull 2
Common Murre 2000
Black Phoebe 7
Say’s Phoebe 1
Rock Wren 1
European Starling 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1
Savannah Sparrow 1
White-throated Sparrow 1
Golden-crowned Sparrow 1

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(https://ebird.org)