The Weekend

Interesting birding over the weekend proper, with a Home Tick on Saturday; Yellowhammer!

That evening I toddled over to the Nose, hoping for an evening tern passage, but was disappointed. 4 Gannets in 30 minutes. Drat. Nowt else to report.



The following morning was considerably better there; an hour and a half gave 3 lovely s/pl GNDs, 2 Puffin and 8 Manxies [and this with only the li'l scope, too]. Also a flock of about 8 Sanderling south.

A couple of other birders were watching as well; notably Bailey Junior getting a Pom which I missed, though he missed the Sanderling [that's seawatching]. As the early mistyfog cleared away, things died off, with the only other interest being a steady passage of in/off Swallows - 110 were recorded.


In the afternoon, I went over to the Exe to try for Little Tern again, and despite one being seen I managed to miss out. Again. An Arctic Tern [which headed off east] and a very fancy dark morph Arctic Skua made up a little, but not much. Better were the dolphins! A pod of about 11 Bottlenose moving north. First seen off the seawall, they got to John's Watch as I did - so a speed of 5mph. [I don't hang about]. They were not all in one tight bunch, so it is possible there were as few as 5 [most seen surfacing at same time] but there could have been as many as 19. I think 11 is pretty accurate, though [I got a lot of looking in]. This includes one very young and two slightly older calves, plus an adult with what looked like a pale mark on its dorsal fin.

At least 48 Whimbrel were either on site or moving through, with 4 GC Grebe on the sea and a minimum of 35 Sarnies around and about.




So, DevonYear-wise, I am into September!


Just don't mention herons...