Making A Pig's Nose Of It

Yup, return of the Horrific Pun Title....

Apologies for the delay, but Life gets in the way sometimes. Anyways, Sunday saw my original plans become derailed and I turned to the Standard Default Setting; Prawle.

The weather was a bit in the middle, yes it was supposed to be windy, but the coming front wasn't due 'til pretty much dark. The odd interesting vagrant may well have hung around [not exactly a night for migrating south] but if it was too windy then anything present [or which had arrived in front of the weather] would be cowering out of the way.

I had a cunning plan; check out how windy it was in the Pig's Nose Valley [home of many rarity sightings over the years], if I could find shelter there might be birds. If not, head to the Point and stare at the sea - something would go by eventually. Sounds half-reasonable?

Quarter-reasonable?



Slightly better than staring at a wall?


Yeah, so I ended up covering most of the network of footpaths west of East Prawle, all of Pig's Nose twice, and all along the Coat Path [including a diversion due to forgetting which bit I was on and going up the cliff too early, oh my poor legs..] to the Point. The Valley was pretty windswept, perhaps not entirely unsurprisingly, matters not helped by someone making quite a racket - at first I wondered if it was a gate banging in the wind, until I heard the voices. I think it was a farmer fixing something. Or maybe beating a tree to death. Hard one to call ;)  I did find a Tree Pipit, which seemed like a good sign as it was quite early on... In total I also found four warblers. Four. Two of them were in the car park bushes as I left, including the only one which actually called and showed more than once. Yes, it was a Chiffchaff.

Oh well.

In three and a bit hours, the sea produced a little; a very close Bonxie was nice*. Two Balearics, one of which came right in and circled to see what a group of gulls were looking at, were great. 7 Common Scoter were also close enough to count 4/3 and be sure no Surfers were lurking among them. Yes, I always check if possible, just like I check every auk; 3 Guillemots and 71 Razorbills. 245 Gannets went west, 8 east, as did the lone Kittiwake. The group of gulls, which were hanging around what I think was a big chunk of weed, included at least 4 LBBs, though they milled a bit and were partly too close to view without risking an accident [yes, that Balearic came very close :D ] so there may have been more.

While not outstanding, it was certainly an interesting day, worth the trip. I do now know which bits of PNV are sheltered from a raging SW [come WNW - bloody Met Office..] and I certainly got a good walk out of it.


[[*I wouldn't say that to it's face, though... ;) ]]