Saturday 14 September 2013

bring on the westerlys

8 Arctic Skuas, 6 Bonxies and 26 Red th Divers passed Whitburn in 4 hours till 10am.Despite the northerly flow we struggled to find many notable birds and recorded no Shearwaters at all. Magic Mark joined me briefly before going to work, and Stevie Thunder. Later the addition of Drunken Duncan and the Hogmeister didn't improve the list much. The discussion turned to the identification and ageing of Sabs Gull and the flight times of said species between Whitburn and Tynemouth
Here is what we recorded in order of appearance

Saturday 14th September 06.00 10.00 NW2 broken cloud and bright sun at times

Cormorant 10n 99s
Black h Gull 90n 17s
Red th Diver 6n 20s
Curlew 2n 1s
Knot 8s
Common Scoter 13n 2s
Eider 7s
Bonxie 6n
Redshank 24n
Bar t Godwit 1n
Sandwich Tern 4n 25s
Arctic Skua 4n 4s
Common Tern 3n
Meadow Pipit circa 20s
Teal 28n
Turnstone 2n
Sanderling 10n
Dunlin 10n
Peregrine 1n
Gannet circa 3500 n
Yellow Wagtail 1s
Shelduck 1s
Wigeon 1n

we had a mouse moth in the obs