Sunday 13 November 2016

Arc of a Diver......

2 Great northern and 66 Red throated Divers passed Whitburn Obs by 10 o'clock this morning. The front row was full with the usual suspects but we were unlucky not to have the cloud cover or birds of the previous day. Still we made the most of it and its not every sea watch you get 2 Snow Buntings flying over calling. Long tailed Ducks continue to be a feature and today's bird was the 12th consecutive day we have recorded one, wonder if we will get one tomorrow

It turned into the Red throated Diver show today and a new record passage for the year has already been achieved with 3162 birds. The previous best was 2975 in 2014. You may have noticed I've started to include a short video on some of my blogs, just to mention they will not always be of the birds seen that day but may be from my archive. They will always be my videos and as it happens today's is of birds seen today. I'm sure that when Steve Winwood wrote Arc of a Diver he was thinking about the profile of a Red throat....well maybe not

This is what we saw in order of appearance

Sunday 13th November 06.55-10.00 WNW2 cloud 4/8 at best

Common Gull 23n 21s
Black h Gull 68n 85s
Red throated Diver 16n 50s

Cormorant 5n 4s
Grey Heron 1n 1s
Eider 8n 6s
Shag 7s
Snow Bunting 2n
Song Thrush 1
Redshank 6n 3s
Goosander 4n
Lapland Bunting 1 in obs field again
Med Gull 1n ad
Common Scoter 12n 8s
Meadow Pipit 18 in off
Wigeon 3n
Pied Wagtail 1s
Curlew 1s
Teal 61s
Long tailed Duck 1n
Scan Herring Gull 1n
Fulmar 2n 1s
Great northern Diver 1n 1s
Turnstone 1n 2s
Coal Tit 1
Scaup 1n