In the words of the immortal, but dead (eh?) Peter Sellars: 'Fúcn get IN!' Pre-work seawatching in pays-off shocker! Got down to the sea at 05:35, very calm - a good day for spotting cetaceans, which is just as well cos there were some good cetaceans to be spotted. An enormous black slug in the water showed a fin towards the back end as it rolled, which was enough for me - a Minke Whale. Then as I scanned around to try and keep up with it, further out were two White-beaked Dolphins breaching. Not a bad start.
Stayed til06:50. Birds were passing by in steady fashion, rather than spectacular, but small parties of Manx Shearwaters heading north (64 in total) kept the interest bubbling, and then a small victory as I hit my own little jackpot with a single Balearic Shearwater heading north on its own. A valuable year tick for the patch list and worth the effort getting up for. In other news, 4 Great Skuas went north, and an Arctic Skua paused on its way north to harass a couple of Black-legged Kittiwakes from the feeding flock of 40+ (several juvs) and 200 Herring Gulls (1 Great Black-backed). 4 Sandwich Terns north, and 12 south; 2 Arctic Terns north, 4 Common Terns north and 3 'Commics' - sorry I wasn't paying attention at the dolphins were demanding some telescope love. 108 Northern Gannets (80N, 28S), and 15 Common Scoters north were the others. Welcome to.... THE OTHERS!
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4 comments:
Sorry Martin, I did the Is this your Minke? joke in the Whitburn Seawatching hide two weeks ago. I have witnesses, but they didn't laugh! I guess it was a load of old balearics!
Don't worry - genius is never recognised in its own time. Your witnesses probably took until they got home to get it. Like my Lizzie laughs three times at every joke. Once when she hears it, again when someone explains it to her and a third time half an hour later when she gets it.
btw...is it you who produces these seawatching records on BirdGuides from Whitburn?
I am afraid there are much better seawatchers than me manning the OBS on a regular basis. I have a getting up early in the morning problem, but I do manage it sometimes.
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