Seawatching! II - The Sequel

In which I do not go prattling on about seawatching but instead recount how I've actually gotten off my arse and done some.

Shock!

Horror!


Trying to predict the weather when you can't trust the liars Met Office... Well, there are assorted weather websites, which sometimes agree, but never give you exactly what you want. The tried and tested 'Just look out the sodding window' method seems the most reliable, it has to be said. Oh well.

I need to edit more when I've not slept since yesterday.

But to finally get to it... Patches of blue sky had me not rushing out this morning, finally turning up at Hope's Nose and getting set for an horrifically late 0950. Yes, that's two frickin' hours later than it could have been. More, and I mean a lot more blue sky had me packing up at 1420. Between the two I didn't do too badly and even got rained on!

My very first sweep netted an impressive 124 Manxies - visions of 2000+ started running through my mind, I admit - then a superb dark morph Arctic Skua came and had a look at the Ore Stone, to the consternation of assorted auks and gulls. All this before 1000, now where's the big shear??
Naturally things then went downhill. Hour one gave 295 Manx past south, but after 5 1/2 hours the final score was 385 south plus 77 north. Yeah.

Very stop-start passage, with odd numbers and odd birds. Star birds were two Ruff - Patch Tick! - which came by at 1135, their white v's showing up nicely as they motored straight on across the bay. Another dark morph Arctic Skua came south, this one a real beast of a bird; if I'd only seen it side-on I'd have called it a Pom, it was huge! Lack of double flashes and the characteristic Arctic wing structure told the truth about it, though. No Puffins or Black Guillemots [ ;) ] and it seemed no Balearics, either, but then 4 came along in 5 minutes after midday. Weird.

First independent juvenile gull of the year was a Yellow-leg, beating a Herring by about 40 minutes. Reading that back, it seems much less funny than I found it at the time. [Yes, I did chide the Herring on it's tardiness, pointing out how far the Yellow-legged Gull had flown while it was sitting about on someone's roof.. Dear, oh dear...]. A pair of Common Scoter put in an appearance and that's about it. A mighty total of 95 Gannets, split 2:1 in favour of going south and an even more impressive 33 Kittiwakes [no juvs] - they 10:1 the same way round things out. Three whole Fulmars finish up the passage.

On shore there was some excitement as a Turnstone showed up, albeit very briefly before heading bay-wards. Not in b/p and I didn't get a good enough look to see if it was a juv. What definitely was a juv. was the adorable little Rockit which kept me company the whole time I was there... so cute!


Time for a few cliches..
Better than I expected. Should have got there earlier. Its a funny old game. You never know what will fly past.

There were some stretches of absolutely bugger all, when I found myself looking at some very pretty but annoyingly distant yachts [Speaking of, did you see that one that did the Wight race? 'Eleonora' - hell of a name for one hell of a boat... ::Drools shamelessly:: ]. No, no more cliches. I'll save that for the next one!



[[Run while you can...]]




[*This is the sequel, after all]