Thankfully I didn't have too much to drink at the beer festival yesterday and was able to get up this morning to go birding at the Obs. The wind was a 20 mph south-southwesterly and there was full cloud cover. As there was a morning tide the plan was to do a sea watch and I joined Ian at about 0545.
Walking up towards the tower I had a large female Wheatear on the beach and this was the only grounded migrant I had during the morning. Interestingly there was some vis this morning and the direction of movement was west, into the wind. Hirundines were the main feature with many moving out at sea. In total we had 50 Swallows, 27 Sand Martins and 30 Goldfinches.
Visibility was very poor and as the morning progressed we could sea the rain front coming in from the northwest. All we had seen was 28 Common Scoters, two Gannets and a single Sandwich Tern until Ian shouted "white winged Gull coming in to the bay"! And low and behold there was a Glaucous Gull motoring east! Due to the distance all we could say was that it was a Glauc and it was either a second or third calendar year bird and that was it!
The rain arrived at about 0730 and the visibility was next to nothing so I called it a day. I've got bird surveys in Cumbria for the next couple of days so hopefully I'll be back on the patch later in the week.
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