Red Dawn.......

Great Northern Diver and Glaucous Gull passed Whitburn Obs this morning. At first light red sun was bursting through a small gap in the cloud cover was perhaps a sign of things to come. We had a few Red throated Divers early on bettering my one from yesterdays watch when Pink Floyd called 12 going north high up. Th Red tide continued and we wondered what the day record was, Saint Mark looked it up and confirmed it as 139 on the 22nd January 1979. After that news we were a little deflated and although we never got near the record the quality of the sea watch soon lifted our spirits
We were seeing a few Harbour Porpoise on a nice calm see, i mentioned to Magic Mark id seen a larger Dolphin like dorsal fin and sure enough Mark picked it up and confirmed its id as a Common Dolphin a first from Whitburn for all of us. It slowly made its way south, two Cetacean ticks in a matter of weeks following the Orca left us overjoyed
This is what we saw in order of appearance

Saturday 7th January 07.50-11.30 W1-2 cloud 7/8

Common Gull 5n 8s
Red throated Diver 77n 11s plus 10 on the sea

Porpoise 5 plus
Black h Gull 13n 16s
Turnstone 20n 10s
Cormorant 4n 11s
Redshank 2n 11s
Fulmar 40n 3s
Guillemot 100n
Lapwing 2n 45s
Common Scoter 3s
Gannet 8n 2s
Shag 3s
Bar tailed Godwit 2n 1s
Eider 15n
Great Northern Diver 1n
Brent Goose 2s pb
Dunlin 4n
Snow Bunting 1s
Wigeon 3n
Common Dolphin 1s 10.35-11.03
Great crested Grebe 1n
Shelduck 4n
Teal 6n
Stonechat 1
Med Gull 1s ad
Glaucous Gull 1n juv