Sunday 30 July 2023

With counts of many thousands of Cory's Shearwaters of Southern and western Ireland and tens of thousands of Scilly and Cornwall on Saturday I decided that  the order of the day was seawtaching again...

Seawatching in style - Rain didn't stop play!!!

I decided not to go out tagging Manxies overnight, but to get up early and go seawatching as the forecast was for moderate to strong, 20-30 mph winds from the Southwest. I began watching at 0645 and was faced with a constant stream of Manxies for the first half hour and very little else passing through the moderate sea and with broken cloud and no rain visibility was good. There was some cloud to the north making the Manxies look very dark at a distance. Manxies were passing at about 2-300 per minute (15,000 per hour) and were near impossible to get any sort of accurate count of. Thinking that we could have a record count on our hands if they continued at this rate all morning, suddenly someone turned off the tap and number fell to about 50 per minute, and then even fewer soon after. By now it was much easier to see other species, as up to now it had just been a total Manx fest. I had seen two Fulmars and 3 Gannets with the Manxies in full swing and just as they slowed down, I managed to find the first Balearic Shearwater of the season heading south at close range – 3-400 yards offshore (900 yards form me). Slightly buzzing I continued watching and saw a few more Fulmars and Gannets and three Common Scoter (another first for the autumn). Then at 0743, an hour into my seawatch I picked up a big shearwater off the north end of the island, about 2 to 2.5 miles away. Its loose languid and unhurried flight action was the thing that I noticed first about it rather than any plumage detail at that distance. My immediate thought was this looks like a Cory's! I immediately zoomed from 40x to about 60x on my scope and lost the bird whilst trying to refocus! Fortunately, about 20 seconds later I picked it up again as it continued south fairly briskly, with its slow wing beats (compared to the stiff rapid beats of a Manxy) it was fairly easy to keep track of. It came closer and closer to the island and at closest was about 800 yards offshore (1300 yards from me), just to the west of Carreg yr Honwy. I watched the bird all in for about 5 minutes before I lost it behind one of the buildings close to me. Everything pointed towards my gut reaction being correct... It was a Cory's Shearwater

The bird flew and glided on fairly bowed wings with them held forwards, the carpel being in line with the head at times. It moved south fairly quickly, and on occasion did a couple of very big shears looping much higher than the Manxies.

Cory's Sketch (C) SDS
The underside of the bird was pure white with the exception of a dark boarder around the tips of the wings. There was no signs of any dark marks on the underwings nor belly thus eliminating Great Shearwater. The upperside was a mid- greyish brown colour, but looked darker when it was further away, possibly due to cloud cover/shadow where it was. The tips of the upper wings were the darkest part of the wings. There was a darkish area possibly across the coverts, similar in tone to the wing tips. The head was hooded and not clean white like a Fulmar, with what looked like a dark mask, which was only visible when the scope was zoomed up to 70x. I looked long and hard for the bill colour and could see the bill which looked pale and not black like the Manxies did. I could not determine the colour. Fulmar was excluded from the Identification process by the bird having longer looking narrower wings, lacking the white head and neck of Fulmar and the overall jizz and flight pattern. Immature Gannet was also eliminated by the shape of the bird, lacking the long pointed neck and head and pointed wings and tail. Great Shearwater was eliminated by the lack of contrast on the upper side around the neck and head area as the bird did not appear capped and also the underwings were completely clean looking. Scopoli’s Shearwaters was not eliminated at the time on plumage details as the exact detail of the underside of the primaries was not visible on a moving bird at that range, but it was considered unlikely! That said there have been a good number in UK waters in the past week!

A short time after (0810) I picked up a pale grey wader with a distinctive flight. Its dark wings and masked appearance, coupled with it regularly landing on the sea led me to ID it as a Grey Phalarope. At 0911 a Storm Petrel winged its way Southend a pale adult Arctic Skua went the same way about 15 mins later.


Six hours after I began seawtaching I had logged 10,406 Manxies, another good count!


One of the highlights though was seeing six common Dolphins playing and splashing amongst a large mixed feeding flock of gulls and shearwaters.

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