Heysham Obs
Pretty wild and wet today with poor visibility a lot of the time. Seabirds amounted to 6 terns of two species and three skuas of two species, one Little Gull and NOTHING else.
So Pomarine Skua is now on my 2015 Patchwork Challenge list for here, but not Common Scoter, Guillemot, Razorbill or Fulmar!
Coastal observations 0600-1345hrs, when wind swung WNW
Pomarine Skua - light morph adult picked up very early to the south as a 'dark wheeler' in the shipping lane at c1317, then continued to wheel quickly NE at yellow buoy range. A nice full-tailed bird
Arctic Skua - two dark morph in the very murky weather headed south along the tideline from Ocean Edge past Middleton at 1220hrs, 3 dark morph late afternoon
Little Gull - adult slowly 'in'
Med Gull - 2CY seen twice on outfalls
Arctic Tern - 3 in early on, then two off seaward end of Heysham two outfall briefly
Sandwich Tern - one off the seaward end of Heysham one outfall briefly
Knot - flocks of 600 and 400 south - didn't land in the area
Kittiwake - adult behind freight ferry late pm
Dunlin - up to 2,500 pre-tide on mudflats south of Ocean Edge, c200 south
Swallow - Just a couple early on, then a gang of 19 in-off just prior to the first lot of rain
White Wagtail - at least 6 birds Ocean Edge with up to 10 Pied Wagtail for the whole morning -what are the latter doing - mixture of male and female?
