Early morning skywatch rewards

Heysham Obs
Tricky seawatching this morning in a light/mod south-westerly.  Conventional 1/2 horizon scope-watching would have produced one scoter, one red-throat, one Gannet and the Mute Swans!  All the rest of the stuff was along the top margin of the viewing field and probably just out of range.  Fortunately alerted to this quickly by the flock of Arctic Skuas which determined the binocular-scan-dominated strategy   This was Plan B if it was too windy for the Middleton CES. which it was.

North harbour wall 0540-0710
Arctic Skua - flock of 3 in at 0550 (2 dm, one lm), dm in very high at 0640
Red-throated Diver - 5 out, then circled up and headed towards Barrow, at 0555, one out, one out
Kittiwake - flock of 34 flew in high at 0558
Common Scoter - 6 in, one out, one out
Gannet - one out and across
Sandwich Tern - one in (the ONLY tern spp seen, including outfalls check)
Razorbill - one out (high!)
Mute Swan - 5 imms flew NNW across the bay towards Ulverston 
Swallow - 3 north-east