Sunday 13 May 2012

Early morning seabird entertainment

Heysham Obs
One of those rare mornings when you had to scrabble for a piece of paper & could not keep all the figures in your head.  A continuous stream of inbound Gannets between 0615 and 0635, then the plug was pulled with no further ones 'in' until at least 0930 (other than an outbound trickle).  The Pomarine Skua was so nearly missed as it climbed into the sky before seemingly circling inland over Heysham Head.   The first Arctic Skua, in contrast, hugged the water and headed low into the Bay.  The seawatch died a death after about 0645 with only a close flock of 11 Razorbill of note and another Arctic Skua just after I left (thanks Pete & Mike)

Sea 0610-0720 & a few later sightings added in
Gannet - 106 in
Kittiwake - 21+19+13 in - first flock all 2CY, second & third flocks all ad! (58 out later)
Common Scoter - c25 distantly out
Guillemot - 3 out
Razorbill - 1+11 out
Guillemot/Razorbill - 41 out
Sandwich Tern - one out - the only tern seen
Pomarine Skua - light morph in/up/overland at 0630
Arctic Skua - lm in as soon as I arrived about 0612, dm in 0830hrs
Fulmar - 3 out
Swallow - 3 in
Whimbrel - 9 seen

Middleton
Gadwall - male still lingering, fingers crossed re-nesting attempt
Hirundines etc:  30 House Martin, 15 Swallow and c12 Swift over and above the model boat and no swimming ponds