Seawatching Glory. In Colour

Imagine, if you will dear reader, the Wagnerian classic 'Kill the Wabbit!' 'Ride of the Valkyries' is playing..


::Sings!!:: "A hundred Balearics! Hundred Balearics! Hundred Balearics! And Twenty More!"





I'd continue the whole post in that refrain, but I fear I'd be lynched...

;D



NOTE: Post now with added colour and more burbling.
OTHER NOTE: You may notice some rather random gaps around the pictures below. This is not a new phenomenon, but due to giggle introducing random paragraph breaks in the post. This is done for reasons best known to their own algorithms, and no matter how often I try to edit, sometimes they just won't go away. So now you know.



Yes, a much better seawatch* today at the Nose, with far friendlier wind, and indeed a lot less rain. The visibility wandered from barely a km, to right out to the horizon. The wind started just west of South, wibbled a bit, then with a couple of funky squalls finally went up to WNW or thereabouts. The sun came out, more than once, and it rained, more than once. Quite a mix, in other words!

Look at the edge of that gunk

Yacht at circa 1km

 

The afternoon saw discrete showers - very hit or miss

Some of the misses were wider than others

-yes, this is the same watch!

I did not get there for first thing, I am ashamed to say. I did get there in the actual morning, before the forecast front [such as it was] and I stayed until - having realised a ton of Balearics was on the cards [when you get 28 in 30 mins of blazing sun, you know it's a good day!] - I'd passed into three figures. Then an epic bird or two kept me on a bit more. I finally tore myself away at six.



I will give some numbers, so you can compare and contrast;

Manx 44
Balearic 120
Sooty 3
Storm petrel 3 [all sp. due to vis. / views, but 95%+ all were EUSP]
Long-tailed Skua 1 [+ 3 sp.]
Pom Skua 7 [+ 2 sp.]
Bonxie 6
Arctic Skua 18
Guillemot 2
Razorbill 7
Puffin 1
Little Gull 1
Med Gull 2
LBB 11
BHG 2
Common Scoter 14
Gannet 584 [+ large frenzy ~3 miles ESE]
Kittiwake 158 [+ ~70 roosting on Lead Stone?!?]
Fulmar 33

Forgot the terns!
Arctic 1
Common 4
Sandwich 7

The big offshore feeding event will have affected numbers of Gannets and skuas; only birds seen moving south were counted, but I can't rule out big circling patterns! Also the Kittiwake passage is probably understated, due to the loitering birds around the Lead Stone, which frequently flew about and so I couldn't count anything close by; where many Kitts pass.

Yeah, only 44 Manxies - where were they? You'd normally expect to get far more Manx than Balearic. Well, at this time of year anyway!
I have a theory.  [[Of course he does]]
You may, if you looked up there, have noticed that the viewable range from the Nose varied somewhat. [Yes, just got nomination for 'understatement of the year'..] What you may well not know is that, at least at the Nose, Balearics tend to pass quite a lot closer in than Manxies do. Not all of them, [the closest shearwaters that day were a couple of single sunlit Manxies which had to make hard turns to go outside the Ore Stone, I can tell you] but generally speaking.
I have speculated on Balearics being birds of more sheltered waters and so preferring to be more protected from the wind, maybe also more used to dodging the attentions of gulls and so less leery of land.
On this watch, the Balearics were mostly on or a little inside the 'Manx line' [~1km], while most of the Manx were closer to the 'Big Shear line' [~1.5km]. A few Balearics were a bit further out and the odd Manx was very close in, but the generality held. It should be noted that most shearwaters were seen once the visibility moved out - about 2/3 of the Balearics and 3/4 of the Manx.

Comparing with elsewhere; if you look at the Start total of Balearics, it is not that different; in fact, in terms of birds/ hour, The Boss saw more [but he's much sharper on picking birds up, so it's not unexpected]. Further off, Portland saw a lot of Balearics, too - implying large numbers of birds in Lyme Bay - but proportionately, Berry didn't, which is odd. Then again, they reported a circa number for Manxies, so perhaps the birds were circulating, or out in the murk there, too?



Now, in an ideal world I'd have 100+ photos to put up at this point [and yes, I'd put them all up], but my every attempt at Balearics, and indeed skuas, failed pathetically. And I promised no blobs. I keep my word.

The best I could manage were these;

Out of focus; do not expand!

But up because you can see the upper- and underwing flashes quite nicely. And because I hit what I was aiming at [even if the autofocus sulked again..]

Isn't it gorgeous?

I have a suspicion that those horrible Things that so annoy the poor chaps up on the Exe start out like this...

Kittiwakes flying about the Lead Stone

I've seen them plonk down for a bit on the Ore Stone ledges before [there may be an awful pic in an earlier post..] but never the Lead. They were really twitchy, groups flushing off all the time, circling around, then going back in**. So I gave up on counting [for passage] any Kitt inside the Ore Stone... [['~70 - actually 69 - was the biggest flushed group, btw]]


Also of note; 2+ Bottlenose Dolphin, 6+ Common Dolphin, Minke Whale [possibly also other rorqual at offshore frenzy]. Yes, despite the mounting swell, periodic good visibility, and sheer time spent looking meant I got lucky! Ok, the dolphins pods were close in.. but I caught the Minke blowing and got a nice back and dorsal view later on. [This could have been a different animal, but they're supposed to be pretty solitary and there was enough time for one to have moved. My hopes wondering about another whale sp. have been dashed by careful research, but nm. Any whale is a good whale!]



All together, it was a classic! :D


Be Seeing You..





[[*Yes, despite getting a Great Shear, Sunday's was not a good watch, really.]]
[[**Despite careful searching, no skuas seen putting them up.. :(  It was probably the GBBs.]]