Oh dear, he's punning again...
Yes, so, my annual early September pilgrimage to Pendeen/Porthgwarra was to the latter, with a forecast of a draped front and persistent SW wind. Showers if not proper rain, maybe even?
Rain did turn up, but only for about 10 minutes - not even hard enough for me to even pick up my brolly - but never mind. The wind blew and the birds were there, oh yes indeed. :D
First up, the traditional scene-setting picses;
Up on Hella Point
The Runnelstone
[with a nice LBB for scale!]
The Sickonian Scillonian III
on the way back
Also traditional, the results of Tom vs Choughs [there were 5 about and they were really taking the mick; posing beautifully and moving when they heard the lens zooming, the red-nosed gits...]
Gotcha!
[Just]
Right, then.
It would be wonderful if I could say I was there at first light, along with 243 Stormies and 3 WISPs, but as the forecast wasn't that good, and as getting up before I've gone to bed is a minor issue, I wasn't. So I had to hear the gleeful account of the one birder dedicated enough to do so.. :(
In fact, not a single storm petrel of any flavour was to be seen the whole time I was there - though the swell, range of birds, and amount of sea in view meant there could have been the odd one. Oh well.
Other tubenoses, though.. :)
Numbers or pictures, pictures or numbers, which first?
Maybe try a mix?
No picture of the two lovely Great Shearwaters, which came through together at 1051, as I was too busy cooing over them - it's so nice to get really good sustained views, and I am a birder first and tog second, after all - for the camera to even occur until they'd just gone by inside the Runnelstone.
Of course, the Runnelstone being at the Nose's Big Shear range means 'pictures' aren't exactly Pendeen standard [you remember those, right?] but as shearwaters were the order of the day, I had to try, and sometimes I even hit what I was aiming at! [Well, with the little viewfinder on my camera, it was a case of picking the right bit of sea - I hoped - taking a couple of shots and maybe I hit the target...]
Blobby things?
Manx Shearwaters
A lot less than 1mile out
These - the closer ones - were about 1/3 to Runnelstone, so about the equivalent of passing inside the Ore Stone. You can see what they are reasonably easily. Though of course still further and in worse light than at Pendeen.
Manxies
Balearic Shearwater
One of 17 that passed by. You can see it's dark underneath, and sort of see the different structure, though not the characteristic pot belly that tends to give them away.
Sooty Shearwater
With it's head up a touch, it looks quite Balearic like in this, but note the overall shape, especially the wings.
Sooty
A better pose, though a rather blurred image, alas. Look at the length and narrowness of the wings, note especially the way the pressed forward carpal joint gives the arm a bowed effect; it's almost u-shaped. This is another of the 39 that went by while I was there [that I saw, I suspect I may have missed a few, especially while counting Manxies..]. Not bad at all*, and enough to prompt joking reminders to watch out for Trindades and check for Short-tailed Shears!
Back to the Manxies. Passage varied greatly, and with only two present for much of the time, I didn't feel comfortable trying to click every single one passing at ranges from a few hundred m out to several km. So I did the responsible thing and made timed counts. It was easy at first; 53 in 10 minutes, but then things kicked off.
Like this;
Just one or two
Lots of shears
How many? Try 789 in 10 minutes. And that was just via bins inside the Runnelstone; I couldn't even try to use a scope to count the more distant ones! It was a river of Manxies, proper stuff! :D
The flow then waxed and waned through the day; I kept up the counts and I reckon a conservative total for the 8 hours I watched was 10,000. Not bad.
A probable cause of the varied passage revealed itself with my companions cry of "Dolphins! 'undreds of 'em!" Ok, he didn't actually say that. But there were an awful lot of [presumably all] Common Dolphins, moving up from the south east, porpoising away in a chorus line more than a mile wide.. We're talking proper Blue Planet stuff here, and I so wish they hadn't been so far off and that I could have caught them on camera. It wouldn't have done them justice, but it would have been nice to have some blobs at least. The same goes with the follow-up, as after the dolphins had disappeared, frenzies started popping up. The Gannets and shears were on them, and bursts of frenzied arcing splashing were punctuated by glimpses of the culprits, sometimes even fully breaching; Bluefin Tuna!
They did get a lot closer, reaching to only a couple of scope fields south of the reef, and there were maybe 20 of them - at least when they were close enough to get a better idea - with one breaching fish being clearly longer than the wingspan of the Gannet it almost collided with!
So, the pulses of Manx passage followed the breakups of feeding frenzies. This makes a lot of sense, and did happen under observation a couple of times, so I reckon it's safe to conclude worked for the rest. While Gannets were passing in dribs and drabs all day, they also seemed to pick up at the same time [though lack of counts = lack of evidence].
Speaking of Gannets, they were a constant presence, and I had to sacrifice counting them as well [also Kittiwakes, Fulmars.. Tut it won't do]
Passage was close in
Gannets and Manxies!
Even though it's fuzzy, I love that photo. :)
With all the feeding activity going on I'd have expected a few skuas to show up. This was the case, though it was only a few. Three Bonxies and 2 Arctics, to be precise. I have bad pictures, really bad pictures..
"Hit the deck! Bonxies coming though!"
This is an Arctic Skua. Really.
Dark intermediate morph adult, too.
The look on this Fulmar's face..
Closer to, I took the inevitable gull shots.. Oh yes, here we go;
Juv GBB
[why can't fancy gulls pose like this??]
They can pose when they want to
Almost got away
Subadult LBB
Lovely juvenile
No escape!
The only Med Gull of the day
isn't quite quick enough
A bit tatty
3S GBB
More numbers; Guillemot 2, Razorbill 7, Redshank 1, and Ruff 1!! The latter with a group of Manxies [!] and produced a little debate over whether it might be a Buff-breast [it was a very buff one, to be fair] but I think I was right in saying Ruff. Even with all the BBS popping up since. I hope. [Oh, that'd be a bad drop...]
Ahem.
Time for a finisher;
Kestrel
Good times.
Be Seeing You...
[[*Though an order of magnitude less than the Day of the Sooties at Berry Head! :) ]]
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