Evening seawatch

Kettleness this pm, from 17:30 to 20:00. First look through the scope and there's a Bonxie quickly followed by Arctic Skuas, single dark phase adults x4 over the next 40 minutes (two came out of Runswick Bay just off the end of the point), a fifth was one of the last birds seen on the seawatch and was a distant job.

About 100 Arctic Terns were fishing some way out and careful scrutiny revealed a nice adult Rosy. The terns were interesting as after about 30 mins they started to move west but then went very high east. Over the next couple of hours they slowly trickled back west with just before 8pm a flock of 49. I'm guessing these were mostly the same birds as many went back to feeding on the sea again in the area where the 100 had been originally but perhaps they were all different. No juvvy Arctics were seen. There was a steady trickle of Common Terns with about 25 altogether, like the Sarnies they were hanging about feeding, 2 juvvy Common Terns were seen and maybe only 1 juvvy Sarnie (out of about 100).

The Whimbrel was on the beach again. 2 small and unidentified waders went west.

Star quacker was a nice drake Velvet Scoter. I would have missed this but was following two slightly eccentric Grey Herons which decided the best Saturday outing was to fly low over the waves about 1Km out, the Velvet was distant, and alone just inside them. Common Scoter reached 25 and Eider 2.

Manxies were going both ways with west slightly more popular, total 9. Lots of Gannet action, Kitts, Fulmar and the usual rafts of auks on the sea with a few flying east, only one Guilly chick mind. Other juveniles were Kittiwake 1 and Common Gull 1.

So an entertaining evening excursion with nice views of skuas and terns and I didn't get wet.