Sunday, September 02, 2007

3 hours this a.m. from 6 on the Kettle

Quite pleasant when I got there, W3-4, but by the time I left it was howling, pitching to 7 at times and I had trouble getting off, lots of effort nil progress.

Loads of terns again. There seemed to be pretty good movement east (south eventually) and the majority were Arctic, I reckoned 249 but that possibly was an underestimate - total Arctic/Common 435 give or take. They didn't just stream past but quite a number paused to feed, at times up to 150. This always causes difficulties with numbers, so it's best guess really. A few more juvs today I thought. Only 2 Sandwich Terns in the three hours (one each way).

A Sooty, a few Manx, 3 Arctic Skuas, 3 Common Scoter and a Little Gull enlivened the proceedings. 3 Red-throated Divers and 2 Whimbrel also made things more interesting.

There are more auks flying about now, today I had the most so far with about 40, mostly Guillemots I thought and all but one flyer went west.

Good news was my pen was in exactly the place I expected to find it - busy place Kettleness.

No comments: