Sunday 25 May 2014

Arctic Skuas

After getting gripped by news of Poms and Stormies from the Warren this morning, I managed to get to Teignmouth for 13:30 where I joined Kev at the Yacht Club. While we were looking out to sea, all the gulls in Teignmouth went up, but we couldn't find the offending raptor. Yesterday the years first Osprey flew over Teignmouth so it may have been another one today.

Offshore there were c15 Manx Shearwaters, a few feeding Kittiwakes and a small diver that flew in from the south and landed far offshore - probably Red-throated. Lee then texted through news of two pale morph Arctic Skuas heading south, and sure enough, 15 minutes later we picked them up fairly close in, and giving really good views in the full sun. Beautiful birds!

After Kev left, I had a possible first summer Yellow-legged Gull flying north, but couldn't get enough detail to be sure. It had a very bright white rump and dark primaries though.

A little later on, Will arrived, and we got news from the Warren of more skuas heading our way, but even after an hour carefully scanning the horizon, we failed to pick them up! We did however have a further c15 Manx Shearwaters and a dozen Fulmars, one of which was a very dark dark morph bird.

No comments:

Post a Comment