Unhappy Success

I'm with Garfield when it comes to Mondays.


That says something about my age. There's a joke involving the three responses you get; "Who??", "Yeah..." and "Wait..do you mean the president..?!?!?"  [[You shouldn't lead with the punchline, but never mind that, eh? Not like I'm pretending to be funny here]]


So, awakening for another lovely week of nights to find that yes, the whale was back in the Bay, and hoping the sodding white arses might have gotten out of bed themselves, I took the Big Scope down to the Nose in the vain hope of a big cetacean Patch Tick.. :)



Oh dear.


Yes, the Humpback had in fact frelled off back south after being harassed by a biamv*, but not before showing gloriously to the lucky buggers on BH. Oh well.

At the time, of course, I had no idea of this and seeing the constant crowd up on BH from my perch at Sandy Point [where I could scan the outer Bay and look for Wheatears at the same time - cunning, no?] I figured it was either down that way or [more likely] south of the Head. Hey, I thought, it could head north at speed at any time [I knew this well from the Slapton shenanigans, after all].


In the end, the only thing that came north was this coast-scanner;

MH-60S 'Knighthawk'

Search And Rescue configured Seahawk variant [the Seahawk being the naval version of the famous Blackhawk], note the search camera attached to the nose [as used by police helicopters etc.] and winch cable pods. **  I guess it's from one of the ships exercising offshore at the moment.

Here's another one from when it came back south a little later;

Big grey hellycopta

The police chopper was up doing the same thing soon after - hopefully a false alarm [I've not heard any relevant news]?


Getting to quieter things, I was not alone up the wrong end of the Bay, as there were still 13 scoters off the Buoy Farm; I'll inflict no more blobs, but they were 11 Common and 2 Velvet. Much closer were the assorted Rockits;

Spying on me in the bath?? How daaaare you!

Also hanging about The Heel, though much less obliging..

Gotcha

Yeah, I got the Wheatear shot. Alas, as soon as I took this - which was a 'shoot first' and a good thing I did - he vanished and I couldn't refind him.. Hmm.

And no, no sign of any sodding white-wingers.. ::Muttermutter::



So you see, I succeeded in getting that Wheatear, and an aircraft lifer [photo'd quite well, I think] but I wasn't an entirely happy bunny. Especially after spending more than three hours standing about in the cold. [[Oh poor baby..]] I did find it amusing at the time [if you can't find a little pleasure in suffering, you're probably not cut out to be a seawatcher. Or twitcher. Or list-chaser..], though the poor dog-walker coming the other way may have been slightly unnerved by my expression as I climbed back up the long long slope at dusk..



Be Seeing You..




[[*EXPLETIVEDELETED in/on a motorised vessel. Yes, it's an inelegant term, but it needs to a)cover everything from big cabin cruisers to jet skis and b) not involve any of the actual words I tend to use]]

[[**The 'S' is a general purpose helicopter and if you're interested in such things, you may notice it doesn't have the high-mounted nose FLIR*** for missile guidance, chin-mounted radar, or the winglets for carrying ordnance. I'm curious as to who owns it, as I didn't think the Americans had sold 'S' types to anyone else, but they're not usually bashful; I'm not sure why its 'NAVY' has been painted over [just visible on the tail side] - only the number '10' is clear - but the crew were in military fatigues.]]
[[***It is possible that the 'camera' turret actually houses an ALMDS - lidar mine detector - which would, if I understand the system, also work for looking for people in the water]]