22 Black tailed Godwits went south past Whitburn Obs this morning as we enjoyed a bit of wader movement. Add to this 20 plus White beaked Dolphins on and off for almost 5 hours, not a bad sea watch
It was dead calm and the poor early light improved through the morning. We picked up the Dolphin's feeding well to the north and for a few hours were unable to get a positive id in the poor light. Eventually they went south to Roker then back north to Souter and we could clearly see they were White beaked Dolphin's. I was joined by Saint Mark and Stevie Makem, if a Bridled Tern had gone south we wouldn't have been surprised! the only missing ingredient was Magic Mark. Hoggie and fiends came in later and told us about a Lime Hawk Moth that had been released in the gardens at the lighthouse and we successfully twitched it later. It had been caught in the Petrel ringing nets the previous night
This is what we saw in order of appearance
Sunday 5th July 04.45-10.20 SE1-2 bright sun to start then light cloud cover
Sandwich Tern 7n 77s
Puffin 67n 32s
Common Tern 11n 24s
Curlew 2n 3s
Black h Gull 32n 28s
Common Gull 8s
Common Scoter 121n 93s
Manx Shearwater 11n 2s
Arctic Tern 8n 30s
Redshank 36n
Knot 13s
05.40 5 White beaked Dolphin feeding to the north growing to 20 plus for the rest of our watch,they were in small groups that sometimes joined up till 10.20 at least
Black tailed Godwit 22s
Red th Diver 4n
Swift 11s
Porpoise at least 4 feeding
Bar taled Godwit 1n
Shelduck 2s
Teal 6n 7s
