Close friends get to call me MC...

... pro..vi..ding it's with digniteee, Top T**t... the indescribable Top T**t etc. ha ha. A quick seawatch before the li'l monsters came down from their Sugar-bomb and cartoon high and need to go swimming. O7:40 - 08:30, with only a very mild N 1-2 but a very choppy sea, with a nasty hazy backlight making things difficult to see. Northern Gannets were steaming through north (410 - I worked it out in ma heid that that's about 480 / hour), 47 Black-legged Kittiwakes and 328 Guillemots/Razorbills, 5 Atlantic Puffins and hold up... a Little Auk.

1 Pomarine Skua went north, and 1 Great Skua, 2 Northern Fulmars, 6 Manx Shearwaters and 1 Sooty Shearwater. The Sooty did something I haven't seen before - came up behind a gannet that was sat on the water, and tw*tted it on the back of the head as it went past, I think with its feet (or maybe belly) . Was deliberate, cos it sheared round as if for another go, but the gannet was in a bit of a mood by then and thrashed around to make it back off. Some sort of kleptoparasitism attempt? BWP is naff all use on the matter.

Otherwise, it was more ducks - 17 Eurasian Teal N, and 2 Mallards, 2 Common Scoters N and 4 Velvet Scoters S. Of patch year-tick-note, 3 Brent Geese went south - I'm pretty certain all bernicla, tho not always the easiest thing to judge in that light. A Red-throated Diver went south and a Peregrine Falcon was going back and forth along the cliffs giving the Pigeons something to do. But by that time I was hearing the junkie screams of sugar-craving sickness from our house, and I knew they needed their chocolate fudge milk.

Took Peter for a walk down to the beach in the afternoon, hoping there would be a really vocal Yellow-browed Warbler we couldn't miss. Not to be, but I did get my only patch dragonfly of the year - a girl Highland Darter.