After many years of trying, I finally managed to have a day off with decent weather conditions so I met Dave at Holme just before it got light this morning in the hope of a decent movement of birds.
Although it didn't seem too promising as we walked to the beach, the wind wasn't quite as strong as we expected, we were pleased to get the first skuas (2 bonxie) through almost as soon as we'd set up. The westerly gannet passage was good and we soon started to pick up a trickle of great skuas. Most of them were close, coming through in 1's or 2's but we did have several larger groups during the morning.
The first 'interesting' bird of the morning, a small dark phase skua, came through as fairly close range. We ended up calling the bird as an Arctic skua but the very light and buoyant jizz initially had us leaning towards long-tailed but after much discussion we decided upon Arctic. In a strong head-wind and dull light, these small skuas are decidedly tricky!
Our first pomerine skuas of the morning, 2 juvs, headed through west before the moment I'd been waiting for all this time happenened when Dave called 'Pom with spoons!' and sure enough, a cracking adult pom skua was powering through west. Worth the wait and great to finally to catch up with one. Two further juvs too the mornings total to 5.
By 11am, things had started to tail off dramatically. The wind had dropped and the continuous passage of gannet and auks had all but dried up and the odd bonxie that was still about seemed to spending more of their time sat on the water rather than on the move. That was my cue to end a great morning.
Holme BO totals 06:44 - 11:30
Bonxie - 88
Common scoter - 106
Gannet - 233
Brent goose - 1
Diver sp - 2
Red throated diver - 5
Arctic skua - 16
Pom skua - 5 (1 adult)
Wigeon - 96
Pink footed goose - 6
Manx shearwater - 13
Sooty shearwater - 2
Kittiwake - 7
Common tern - 5
Sandwich tern - 7
Snipe - 8
Fulmar - 1
Teal - 67
Tufted duck - 2
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