Monday 4 May 2015

May the 'fourth' be With You?

Today something happened.  Something I didn't know to be possible.  Something I thought only to be true in dreams, crazy dreams.  Seawatching... without a ridiculously early start.  Not even relatively early, I didn't leave until after midday.  I know this may be hard to believe, but I assure you it's true!
 After midday you see, was when the south-easterlies were supposed to kick in.  An supposedly that's what's needed for a good seawatch.
 I got to Splash Point for 13:00, and immediately had three Little Terns pointed out!  Of course, by Little Terns I do mean black blobs with pointy wings - it may be a different time of day but this is still seawatching after all. Still, things were looking promising, fingers were crossed for a good movement of Pomarine's!
 A handful of Sandwich Tern, a 1cy Med Gull and some Common Scoter soon followed, but no Poms, and things soon slowed down to barely a steady passage of birds past.  Hmm, surely when the wind really started so would the bird movement.  Logic right?  And so, the wind picked up, but the passage didn't.  After four hours all that was seen of note was a moderately close Arctic Skua, a couple of specks that were Bonxie's and a few Red-throated Diver. A Porpoise too, but I don't think that had anything to do with the wind movements...
 At 17:00 I had to call it and head home.  Where were the Poms? I don't know. Five passed Dungeness, but apparently avoided Splash.  So although it was enjoyable -especially not having to put on an alarm for 4:50am- it was a pretty quiet seawatch.  Today, the force was not with me.

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