January Sea Watching And Other Patchyness

The space in the title is very deliberate, by the way.

It was only this last Sunday that I dragged myself out to head down the Nose and do some seawatching, on account of an actual front coming by when i could get at it [shock]. It wasn't ideal - too late in the day and after no decent preliminary weather - but you takes what you can get.

As an aside, I am determined, after last year's pitiful showing, to seawatch at least once every month. You read it here.

I didn't give it all day, but I tried. What did I see? Bugger all, really!

As expected.

I had hopes, of course, of interesting auks and maybe skuas and so on. I didn't even see a diver! [Ok, The Boss was at Berry Head and only had 2 RTDs, which probably came out of the Bay...]

A variety of gulls, lots of mostly local Guilles and a few Razorbills, but not a lot YT-wise. One very interesting gull looked horribly like an adult [or more likely subadult] YLG, but did not let me photo it, on account of it flying past at an inconvenient moment. Also the light was crap.

So, the odd picture;

Common Gull

Best thing that I got on pixels.
Yeah.

BHG

The SWBCM fired up

[thus gulls above]

I had my mad hopes fired up again by this, dreaming of white winged things, but not even a Med Gull....

Oh well, worth a try.

Count the Grey Seals

There's 5, if you can't be bothered.

Guillemots being harassed by gulls;

a GBB and two Herrings

Ooh, what's this??

Some of you may be thinking; 'Hmm, maybe he was winding us up about seeing nothing? Is that an Iceland? Even a Kumlien's??'

It's a Common Gull. Full adult, full primary tip markings. Same bird you saw up there, in fact.
You see, the camera does lie.
:)

Great Black-backed Gulls.

Size / structure variation.

Horrible blurry gulls in the rain

I'd stick numbers up, but well.. 18 Gannets an hour? Only figure of interest was 28 Common Gull, which is quite a lot for the Nose. [At least these days].

This is how the day ended

Day before I patrolled the Patch without finding any year ticks or even anything really interesting..

Blackcap shows us his Blyth's Reed pose

Star of the big garden birdwatch

[if only I hadn't forgotten to actually add it...]

Pied Wagtail

Summer Snowflake.
It's all Spring and stuff

More ketchup to come, including Yet Another Wild Goose Chase [this time I get too serious], that Pretty Scenery, and Getting Wet For Birds Again.


Be Seeing You...