To insanity, and beyond!

Lying in my bed at 5.45, occurred to me that I'd been woken by a passing train and the rain pattering against the window, which can only mean one thing... nasty weather from the south-east and time to get up. Walked down to the beach along the Elsick Burn, but *still* with no migrants and desperately green over other people's good falls. Btw, I *really* thing Sky News isn't taking its weather reports seriously just now.

With all the rain, the burn was very full and I wasn't too surprised to find two White-throated Dippers on the beach, feeding among the breakers. Also 12 Ruddy Turnstones here, a couple of ruddy adults among them. As always when the bushes are crap, I stared out to sea, and although there weren't large numbers, the mix of species was just enough to keep my interest for 45 min, 07:15 - 08:00 - i.e. 2 Sooty Shearwaters and 3 Manx Shearwaters, 8 Red-throated Divers south, and 1 N, an unusual 9 Dunlins south, and a patch scarcity 1 Ringed Plover. 3 Great Skuas north, and 2 Arctic Skuas, attacking Black-legged Kittiwakes of which there were 86 moving south. Also 8 Eurasian Teal south, 4 of which landed to sit incongruously among a small flock of Guillemots on the water - btw there were 100+ auks back and forth, which there hasn't been recently.
Northern Gannets - bit confused 113N and 80S, Northern Fulmars 3N and 10 S. I also heard the Herring Gulls making a racket about something and looked up just in time to see a Peregrine Falcon flying off with prey - an auk sp.