Recent Sightings

Lighthouse Lecture Series – Doug Forsell
Event
12/20/2025
The Lighthouse Lecture Series welcomes Doug Forsell, presenting “Birds and Mammals of the Eastern Aleutian Islands and Why Tufted Puffins are the coolest Seabird” on Saturday, December 20, at 4 p.m.

Doug Forsell spent the summers of 1980 and 1981 working as part of a team of four biologists surveying the Eastern Aleutians Islands by Zodiacs. Our mission was to develop better methods to survey seabirds and to estimate the distribution and abundance of the nesting seabirds. The
data helped prioritize acquisition of islands for incorporation into the Aleutian Islands National Wildlife Refuge and to identify important seabird colonies so the area could be excluded from planned offshore oil leases. We estimated over two million seabirds nested there, including three of the four largest colonies of tufted puffins. This talk is not just about the incredible wildlife and scenery of the Aleutians, but also how we estimated seabird numbers, the trials and tribulations of working in the Aleutians, and the secret nightlife of tufted puffins.

Doug Forsell has studied waterbirds for over 50 years. He received his bachelor’s and master’s Degrees from Humboldt State University, where he studied the predatory efficiency and energetics of wintering belted kingfishers. He worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1976 until his retirement in 2012. He spent ten years in Alaska primarily studying the at-sea distribution and abundance of marine birds, but he also worked on their food habits, colony surveys in the Aleutian Islands, mortality of seabirds in high seas Japanese gillnet fisheries, and recovery efforts of the then-endangered Aleutian cackling goose. He co-authored a techniques manual for shipboard surveys, a publication on the winter distribution and abundance of seabirds of Kodiak Island, and an atlas of the at-sea distribution of seabirds in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.

He spent four years as the refuge manager and biologist of five remote tropical Pacific islands, where he studied the breeding biology of twelve species of tropical seabirds, plus monitored reef fishes and wintering green sea turtles. Living on Johnston Atoll, he also monitored
contaminants in reef biota and sought to mitigate the effects of 1,300 people sharing one square mile of land with over 250,000 seabirds.

Doug moved to the Chesapeake Bay area in 1990, where he worked to implement the Waterfowl Management Plan of the Chesapeake Bay Program. His major activities involved the interpretation of waterfowl population trends and habitat requirements, surveys of waterbirds in offshore waters, assessing the mortality of waterbirds in anchored gillnets, identifying and mitigating threats to birds and their habitats, and modeling seaduck distributions with oceanographic characteristics and benthic invertebrates. In his last few years there, he worked on sea watches and aerial winter waterbird surveys of offshore Atlantic coastal waters to better define the numbers and movements of coastal birds to mitigate the impacts of sand mining, entanglement in fishing gear, and wind power development.

Doug retired in 2012 and moved to the Mendocino Coast south of Point Arena where he spends his time conducting bird surveys and working on various citizen science projects such as the Sonoma County Breeding Bird Atlas and monitoring cormorant productivity, and searching for marbled murrelet nest areas.

Today we had a cloudy day with offshore fog that threatened to roll in closer to shore but did stay a good distance out. The sea was choppy and rough.

AT THE POINT ARENA LIGHTHOUSE PENINSULA, WE OBSERVED:

🟣 2 southbound gray whales swimming together approximately 1/2 mile off shore – backs visible, flukes also visible as they dove

🟣 1 unidentified whale about 1 1/2 miles out – no distinguishing features were seen

🟣 69 harbor seals

🟣 5 great egrets

🟣 1 great blue heron

🟣 2 American kestrels

🟣 10-12 meadowlarks

🟣 9 brown pelicans

🔷🔷 SOUTHBOUND GRAY WHALES TO DATE = 4

Observations today at the Point Arena Lighthouse peninsula where it was clear, sunny, a bit windy, and excellent visibility.

🔆🔻 NO WHALES SEEN 🔆🔻

🔆 105 harbor seals

🔆 2 American kestrels

🔆 1 great blue heron

🔆 1 Northern harrier

🔷🔷 SOUTHBOUND GRAY WHALES TO DATE = 2

Although the skies were cloudy and gray, the ocean was flat calm and visibility was quite good.

AT POINT ARENA LIGHTHOUSE PENINSULA:

❇️♦️ NO WHALES SEEN ❇️♦️

❇️ 88 harbor seals hauled out at low tide

❇️ 1 bobcat

❇️ 2 kestrels

❇️ 2 red-tailed hawks

❇️ 8-10 killdeer

❇️ 4 brown pelicans flying south

The ocean was flat calm today, no wind, a bit cloudy but visibility was excellent.

Observations today from the Point Arena Lighthouse peninsula:

❇️ 🔺NO WHALES SEEN ❇️ 🔺

✳️ 56 harbor seals

✳️ 2 American kestrels

✳️ 1 red-tailed hawk

✳️ 12 brown pelicans flying south