Back To The Sea

Brisk to strong onshore winds with showers if not a full on [albeit weak] front coming in? Sounds like the Nose was the place to be, right?

Well, if weather forecasters were competent / not total liars, then yes.

Ahem.

There was one very short if quite sharp shower, plus a couple of spit-spots, but more chance of sun than real rain. The wind worked its way from just shy of NE to just shy of E, giving a nicely rough sea but very little in the way of shelter to watch it from. The Alcove was the best spot, but that gives you a very low viewpoint, and today mostly looking into the swell rather than the ideal across it. Oh well, you play the hand you're dealt and all that. I gave it nigh on 4 1/2 hours, with not a great deal in return; a light morph Arctic Skua went north, as did a very nice 1s Med Gull and a couple of Common Gulls. One definite and another probable Balearic Shear went south along with 2 Razorbills. The rest were splits - Manxies had 23S*/8N, Gannets 80S/16N, Kittiwakes 33S/25N, Fulmars 8S/5N. The Guillemot colony was bustling, with no two counts the same and at least 300 birds present. Also of note was a Whimbrel, flushed from the foreshore by a rockpooling family [yes, really!] which flew over to the Lead Stone and clung on with the gulls..

[*Probably a big undercount, as for most of their transit they were hidden by the swell and with the wind in their favour they were moving.]

Despite the relative lack of birds, I had fun. The sea was a sight, there were plenty of yachties and passing ships to watch, and the Manxies heading north came by nice and close. For that matter, so did some of the southbound ones; tacking onto the auk-stream going to the Ore Stone and then peeling off to pass behind it at the last moment - kept me on my toes. :)

PYL: 115