Shears and Sixes

Ah, the weather can be a pain in the neck, can it not? After a week of interesting stuff while I was trapped at work, the next front decides to come through overnight..


I'm not even going to curse the week-early tern, the big-nosed bastard...  Oh, ok, so I did anyway.


Ahem.


Right then, so this morning dawned with a lovely strong SW [ish] wind, but also blazing sunshine.. Right, that put the [and my] Nose right out, so time for Plan B. Off to Prawle it is!


The drive down is surprisingly smooth - though it is quite early so the grockles are probably still having breakfast - and soon I am heading for the Point. After I shut the gate so the cattle can't wander up the road..  Arriving at the nice sheltered spot amongst the rocks, I find [Devon Birder] on site - he [having this 'dedication' thing] has been there since 0530*  - and as I'm setting up, he finds a Stormy. Despite much looking, I can't get on it and it buggers off out to sea. Oh well, it's not like it was a Wilson's**.

Birding being fond of evening things out, later on I get on a Balearic which duly vanishes behind a big wave [plenty of these about]. Drat.
Otherwise, there's not a great deal going on apart from Manxies - once again the Met Office have spoken with forked tongues and the weather stays sunny with the odd cloud, so quelle surpris - though they are coming through in decent-sized pulses. [Devon Birder] had had not quite 100 an hour and over my six hours I average about 108 - though the hourly figures illustrate the passage better: 175, 111, 170, 90, 74, 26. The Gannets, those great indicators of movement? 19 an hour west. Not great.

Yeah, it died after the forecast good bit early PM failed to appear. On the up side, another Stormy showed up and this one performed at bin range for a couple of minutes before it, too decided to head out and vanish.
[Devon Birder] had had enough after 7 hours, but I hung on to make it 6 for me - being rewarded with the decreasing Manx movement, a few Kitts and Fulmars, and a couple more Balearics. These two naturally show much better [I swear they know and do it deliberately] - one's all dark and the other is one of those really light ones.

It wasn't horrific, there were birds passing most minutes, just not usually many at once. This is by no means a disaster; it gives you the chance to better study what you're looking at. Interestingly- marked Fulmars, 'dirty-winged' and other odd Manxies [one of which had an oil stain for the full-on 'mini-Great Shear' effect!], oddly- moulted immature Gannets, and so on..


And finally.. I get home, feeling quite satisfied with having swanned off and actually seen something, to find that yes, there were big nasty showers moving through here... Bugger. I'm telling myself there still wouldn't have been anything. If I do it enough, maybe I'll believe it?






[[*What does the 0 stand for?***]]
[[**That's not foreshadowing, it's what I actually said.]]
[[*** 'Oh, to live closer to where I seawatch! ;) ]]