5 White beaked Dolphins and circa 10 Porpoise went south past Whitburn Obs this morning and the Bridled Tern!. Yes it is the13th today but who says its an unlucky number. Stevie Howart beat Magic Mark and myself into the obs today, New Mark joined us and will henceforth be known as Saint Mark in this blog after calling the Bridled Tern as it came south. It wasn't far out and we all managed to get on it without much fuss as it slowly moved south feeding. It was good to see that observers to the south of us managed to connect with it after the news had been put out. I dipped it last year when it was at Saltholme briefly due to the A19 being closed so am relieved to get it on my county list at last and from the best possible location, the obs.
We had a cracking watch today in poor conditions with rain and mist, this is what we saw in order of appearance
Sunday 13th July 05.15-10.00 SW1 rain drizzle mist etc
Manx Shearwater 46n
Puffin 47n 1s
Common Scoter 1599n 104s (includes one flock of 440n)
Sandwich Tern 36n 372s
Little Tern 1s
Common Tern 25n 45s
Redshank 8n 5s
06.00 Whit beaked Dolphins 5 south, last seen at 08.05
Arctic Shua 2n
Porpoice 5s at 06.50 and 5 plus feeding around most of the watch
Black h Gull 4n 6s
Eider 19n
Teal 2n
Shoveler 1n
Swift 4s
Arctic Tern 30n
Red th Diver 2s
Bonxie 1n
Gadwall 4s
Curlew 5n 1s
Dunlin 4s
08.10 Bridled Terns
Knot 5s
Bar t Godwit 1n
Common Gull 1s
Gropper 2 reeling
Common Sandpiper 1s
