This post now includes Extra Seawatching Content!
Woo!
And is horrifically late..
UnWoo.
😔
Anyways;
I like to visit Froward Point at least once a year.
It's not an easy place to get to, but once you're there [quietly wondering if your legs will take the climb back...] it's quite good. Not perfect, by any way; 'tis too tucked in to really give good coverage of passage birds, but for the northern half of Start Bay it's not bad at all. So when I don't have the time to go to Prawle, the wind or time of year isn't right for the Nose, or I just fancy a change, I go there. Also some quite good land birding in the area 😁
These days, though, as well as the 'fun' level of climbing involved, the nt [::hawk ptooi::] are doing their best to keep any one for whom actual money is an issue away; with ever-increasing charges at the only access points and less-helpful hours, too. [You now get to choose from 3 hours or all day, the previous, handy, four hour option is no more. 3hrs is not long enough to get down and do an even half-decent watch... Also said 3hrs costs more than the 4hrs did. Naturally. 😡]
Ahem.
Anyways, it was a good call, as there was a lot of feeding action going on in - or more accurately off -the northern part of Start Bay. This made getting counts less than easy, unless of birds clearly passing and only passing.
So we have what we have.
420+ Gannets and 'more' Kittiwakes were feeding in a long band of activity, well out [ie. km scale range], with an unkown number of shearwaters - almost all seen being Balearic - with them. 87 Balearic and 11 Manx Shearwater were seen breaking off and passing South, so those are very much minimum numbers.
1 Bonxie trolled through early on, scattering all before it in tradtional 'bowling ball in a skittles alley' manner, with 2 Pomarine and at least 12 Arctic Skuas counted, including a group of 3 which came close enough inshore to not only photo - albeit badly - but to see and harrass a passing Whimbrel.!
Mediterranean Gulls were also part of this feeding activity [also, and notably, a dearth of Herring Gulls {??} ] and I counted a total of 65 come in and head into Start Bay's inshore waters, presumably to Slapton Ley/beach with a 1cy Yellow-legged Gull passing even closer in [I just hit it with a scramble-grabbed camera]. Plus 3 Fulmar and 3 Black-headed Gulls.
32 Common Scoter [in three groups] passed by south and were definitely passage birds.
Under all this activity were seemingly several groups of Common Dolphin; getting counts at range not easy, but I recorded groups of 15+ and 39. Blue-finned Tuna were seen once early on, and may have been present throughout, but too far out to call. My first Bottlenose Dolphins of the year - slightly closer in than the main feeding area - were a group of 4+, with an even closer-inshore group of 3+ Harbour Porpoise also seen.
It was all rather good.
Over the weekend before the Marsh Sand, a series of days of forecast ESE to SE that turned out to be ENE to NE saw me giving the Nose repeated goes, with not a lot of numbers, but quite a bit of quality.
A mere 10 hours total over three days, and with half of them on the least productive day [oh, what a surprise], but I packed a few goodies in.
Then we come to my Traditional Early September Hollydays, when I got to the Nose five times, with additional watching from Goodrington-Three Beaches and Prawle, though only an average watch time of four hours [poor, very poor]. However, despite barren patches there were some really rather tasty birds seen [and some dropped for that matter] but that's seawatching.
I'm not going to put a mass of numbers in this post, as to be honest I want to get something out. I will instead do another seawatching post, which will hopefully include some possibly interesting comparisons of hourly rates of those birds I've done hourlies for, as well as a few of the others [Blog Rules apply*]
I have been doing some other things; just yesterday I was up on t'Moor, taking far too long to find a cairn circle - albeit one buried under Gorse {that was NOT in the book, you fiend} - and getting rained on hard as a result [I had waterproofs, I'm not an amateur], but also finding surprise Whinchats! Been meeting a few of them, recently.
So yes, more to come. Hopefully with a bit more regularity of posting, both here and pictures over there.
You never know, might happen.
Be Seeing You...
[[*Currently rarest allowable bird is Long-tailed Skua, on account of Sabine's Gull's regrettable recent scarcity. But Sabs have been doing well this year, so maybe a rethink will be in order.]]
