Wednesday 20 July 2016

One Fulmar Does Not A Seawatch Make

On Saturday morning I headed to the Point for my first seawatch in some time. I had 7 oktas cloud cover with a 15 mph west-northwesterly wind. It was quite warm and looking back at my notebook for this time last year I was complaining about having to wear hat and gloves, so maybe this summer is marginally better!

The first bird that I had heading west out of the bay was a Fulmar and as it appeared so early on I thought there was some hope of a reasonable count and haul of species. The Fulmar gave me a false sense of hope and I should have realised that as there was some northerly in the westerly (I don't how many times I have said that here), it wasn't going to be a good seawatch!

The Fulmar was the star of the morning and the supporting cast at sea included a Sandwich Tern, a flock (yes a flock) of five Great Crested Grebes, three Cormorants, 13 Common Scoters and three Gannets.

And that was it! There was only one sensible option and that was to take up Ian's offer of a decent coffee back at his. So I did and as usual we put the birding world to rights!

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