Cold, Wet, Not Miserable!

The weather continues to be inconvenient.

It really won't do.

But being on Nights gives me a little flexibility.

Sometimes.

Anyways, Monday afternoon I was able to get to the Nose for 1.5 hours of fun from The Mounds [up to dusk.!]

I was fooled by all the sunshine into not dressing for a proper winter seawatch and so got a bit chilly [but that's all part of the fun] and very rained on [but had, in a moment of prescience, taken a brolly along at the last moment, which saved me from hypothermia...]

 

Anyways, my camera continues to be not-entirely-functional [and replacing it is proving difficult, as it and its peers are out of stock everywhere... damn Time Of The Year...] so you're not getting some of the really good stuff [er, my blog definitions of 'really good'], but here's something;

 

The Goddess of Birding helps

out with Little Auk locating

 

Note the rainbow-led shower and the actual slick!!

Lots of light gulls on that there brown streak of loveliness, though the best one - a 1cy Little! - buggered off as I arrived and my camera just laughed at me...

Kittiwakes, BHGs, Common Gulls were all present in double figures [more Kitts and BHGs, ratios varying with assumed Kitt passage] with a couple of Med Gulls dropping by [ad and juv]

Small [not Little] Gulls

With a lot of loitering and so on, counting Kittiwake passage wasn't feasible, but I did get a few numbers, all S;

Razorbill  92

Guillemot  7

auk sp.  7

Little Auk  1 [1559*]

Gannet  36

C Scoter  1 [f]

* Loosely with [or possibly being overtaken by] 4 Razorbill, close inshore. It lost me when I tried to zoom in on it, pretty sure by coming in even closer. Also a possible on the Manx line at 1520, but angling away and couldn't rule out Puffin.!

A GND flew in from the north and landed by what turned out to be 4 others north of the Ore Stone Channel. The raft eventually built up to 7 birds, with another [in distinctive near- s/pl] to the south of the Ore Stone. A possible BTD was also present, a big one if it was one, but I was unable to get good enough views with the swell.

An interesting candidate for a subadult YLG spent a while on the Lead Stone [nice boxy white head, good mantle tone] but I couldn't get a usable pic, let alone a look at the wings..

Having rained on me,

that there cloud above the

Ore Stone saunters off over

Lyme Bay...

On my way down, I had a quick look in the newly-opened Top Dell, where I found a lone female Blackcap.

Well, better than just Robins, right?

But definitely worth the effort.

:)

Be Seeing You...