Ketchup 1; NYE Diverfest!

This week has been one of work and a cascading horrorshow of vehicular torment, but never mind, eh? So, no sneaking off to Broadsands or anywhere else for me. Yet.

Instead, here comes some ketchup for your cheese. [It makes sense in my head and so it stays in]



Chronological order? Sense? Nahhhhh.

First to hit the keyboard is the seawatch I pulled in response to Dylan's NYE partycrashing.

The forecast was for the frontal system to pass overnight, but a strong W or SW wind with showers was to follow and with all the rain I had hopes for the SWBCM to [still] be working, which would give something, even without passage.


As it worked out, there was passage AND a slick, so it was all good, oh yes.

I gave it five hours - the passage did die eventually - and in that time recorded a rather impressive 49 divers. Yes, you read right.

Two in situ on the sea, one in from the north and landed, one going north, and all the rest south; mostly angling into the Bay. Of those, 45 were GND and a fair proportion were 1w. They weren't all loners, either, and the sight of a diver train - like the Gannet trains you often see - had me too surprised and amazed to think to lift my camera before they went into the Bay [drat!]. I did wield the camera a fair bit, though, and sometimes it even obeyed..

Yes, you know what's coming;

Some were close enough

 when the camera felt like working

Hold on, that's not a diver!

That's right, it wasn't just divers going by amongst the typical Gannets, auks, Kitts and Fulmars..

I only got one skua in shot - the first one - and here it is again;

There goes Trouble

Can you hear Dizzee Rascal, too?

This one went south, three came north later on. Also an adult light morph Pom, with spoons of sorts!?! Apparently 'half length projections' are part of winter plumage, but this is the first time I've seen one with them - and if they were half length, I'd doubt it could fly across the wind in s/pl...

Exit squall

The slick could be hard to spot..

Though the gulls seemed to find it ok

Did somebody say gulls?

Four of the five

Enough gulls [enough? enough? You can never have enough!!], there be Scoter.

There were also a whole heap of Common Dolphin - at ranges down to about 400m! - but getting shots of them looking even vaguely decent was pretty much impossible.

Chorus line.

Sort of

Finned somethings

Gotcha?

Ok, that's enough of that, too. There were multiple groups going different ways at different ranges, so getting a decent count was.. Well, there were a lot of them, anyway.

Speaking of a lot, at least 45 Common Gull were about the slick [you may have noticed getting half-decent shots of them up there? Yeah, volume of effort], which is a LOT for the Nose, where you usually get a dozen or so at most.


Right, I've put up a lot, so I think that will do.


Be Seeing You..