With a fresh north-west wind
forecast Malcolm, Roger and myself headed to Flamborough Head for a day’s sea
watching. We arrived just after 09:00
and headed down to the foghorn station where we able to get out of the wind to
begin the sea watch.
It wasn’t a spectacular day
but we did see most of the species we expected but missed a Long-tailed Skua
going south. Most of the birds were
heading north but the few skuas we saw tended to buck the trend except for a
few Great Skuas mid-afternoon.
We had small numbers of both
Wigeon and Teal and eleven Common Scoter moving north and there was a single
Eider observed on the sea. Four
Red-throated Diver moved south with one heading north, 106 Fulmar moved north,
eight Sooty Shearwater and six Manx were observed heading north and I counted
2649 Gannets all heading north, with much smaller numbers going south. There were at least four Cormorants and
twenty Shag observed with some feeding just of the head. Surprisingly a Grey Heron was observed
heading north and we had a single Curlew and four Turnstone also heading
north. Skuas were rather disappointing
with just five Arctic and thirteen Great Skua observed, all heading south except
for three Greats moving north during the afternoon. Twenty-four Kittiwakes, thirty-eight Sandwich
Terns and four Common Terns and many more unidentified terns were observed
heading north. There were small numbers
of auks heading south during the afternoon and four Guillemots were observed on
the sea and a Wheatear was observed on the cliff top.
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