Dancing On Mercury

Hope's Nose is a funny old place. Sometimes you can go there in what seem to be very good conditions and get 4 Gannets and a Fulmar [nope, not letting go of that one any time soon..]. Sometimes you can turn up in bright, nay sunny weather and get a shedload.

Guess.

I was not up at the crack of doom this morning to be there for first light. I needed sleep, and my optics were still soggy. [Indeed, the filter on my scope kept steaming up most of today, which was annoying] So it ended up being an afternoon watch. Oh well. I do wonder if anyone got there this morning, and if  so how amazing it was, because there were Stormies, my dear readers, there were loads of them!

Veteran birders will tell you that Hope's Nose hasn't been the same since they stopped pumping raw sewage into the sea. This is true, but the outfall is still there, and while it is officially treated safe waste water that goes out now, it is also a storm drain outlet [or some such jargon]. This means that when it rains like it has done, you get a great big sheeny slick of smelliness. Cue fun times! [And nose plugs, if the wind's not offshore..]

Today, with the bright overcast verging on and even breaking into blazing sunshine [in between the odd light if squally shower], the slick was still visible. All the bits big enough for gulls and Fulmars had been polished off, but there was still plenty to feed teeny tiny Stormies  :D This is where the Nose beats Berry Head - you may not get so much, but what you do get can be right down your throat; you'd need a boat to get closer. The most I counted at any one time on the slick was 5, but with birds coming, feeding and moving on, plus others that went straight through I totalled an amazing [for me] 34* Storm Petrels in four hours. Hot damn.

It was quality over quantity [as HN does] with the Stormies backed by a gorgeous 4cy [you could just get some barring in the underwing coverts, though it had a full tail] light morph Arctic Skua past south, nice and close. Almost overhead went a female-type Eider, also south. A party of 5 Common Scoter flew south, as did 48 Gannets, 53 Kittiwakes, 21 Fulmars. 18 Manxies passed north in small groups and a Swift and 3 Swallows came in/off.


Stormies tripping the light fantastic in the sunshine...  Not bad.  :)

*33 Stormies and one possible Wilson's - flight and silhouette right but not able to get plumage. Drat!