We are in a series of morning tides at the moment and I decided to have a couple of hours seawatching at the obs this morning before locking myself away in the office for the day. At first light I had 4 oktas cloud with a 15 mph westerly wind.
It was quite slow for the first half hour or so, but then the passage at sea slowly increased. It wasn't amazing, but just enough to keep you interested. As the tide came in and covered the shingle spit it pushed the 43 Cormorants off and they headed west out of the bay to feed. Gannets were in reasonable numbers this morning and 46 headed west out of the bay, with some very close in giving stonking views.
The Gannets were supported by a cast of 21 Common Scoters, 8 Sandwich Terns, 2 Common Terns, 2 Little Gulls and a Guillemot. At about 7.20 a.m. I picked up a large bird flying low over the sea in front of the wind turbines. I could see it was a large raptor and as it got closer Ian and I could clinch its ID as an Osprey. It started to climb and headed towards land, but we lost site of it as it crossed the boundary of Morecambe to Liverpool Bay. Presumably it would have made landfall somewhere along the coast at Blackpool.
Due to the 'strongish' westerly wind vis was kept to a minimum with just single Swallow and 2 Pied Wagtails west whilst I was there. The wind is moving to the southeast tomorrow with a showery airstream, so I will try and get out for a couple of hours if I can. It looks like high pressure might be building towards weekend that looks as though it might get the first real autumnal vis on the go. Having said that it could all change before then!
2 comments:
Had just got back in to bed after being out with Frank when all the local gulls started making a right old commotion at about 07.30 - even said 'bet that's an osprey' to the wife - Shoulda looked out of the window!
Cheers
D
That would have been about the right time Dave. Cheers, Seumus
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