A cracking trip there Owen. Nice one.August 19th
Feels like a long time since I added to this, I have managed to see a UK Clouded Yellow to bring me to 50 species in the uk this year but i'd already seen them in spain so didn't write it up.
Very early start today for a Pelagic with West Coast Birdwatching. I was supposed to go last year but was exhausted after a scottish holiday and couldn't make it so it was great to finally do one. We'd been warned of very choppy seas and combined with the fairly fast boat working against the tide that led to a very wet outward journey with quite limited chances to get onto much although the boat did stop when we definitely saw anything interesting.
I'd hoped a little for some late puffins as we were heading past skomer and skokholm and the previous weeks trip had caught some but they've presumably all left now. Did however make up another species I was sure I'd missed for the year, Arctic Tern with I think 7 birds at various points.
Plenty of Manx shearwater and some early Storm Petrels and a single Arctic Skua and Harbour Porpoise.
When we put out the chum, or half of it, the more solid fish bag got dislodged from the boat and presumably made some gulls happy, we immediately started getting good numbers of Storm Petrels very close in. Even with a very rocky boat and a bridge camera I managed to get a few photos. After a while it became obvious that there were a few Wilson's in amongst them. Highest count was 3 in a view at once but by that point there were over 40 petrels flying around and there could have been more wilsons. Not an easy bird to see in Wales and definitely the highlight of the trip. I also really enjoyed spotting a (pretty small to be honest) Ocean Sunfish and the views of a few close in Common dolphin. Oddity of the day was a flight of Bar Tailed Godwit about 15 miles out.
Top day out.
262 Arctic Tern
263 Arctic Skua
264 Manx Shearwater
265 Storm Petrel
266 Wilson's Storm Petrel (welsh tick)
29 Harbour Porpoise
30 Common Dolphin
Birds 266 Mammals 30 Herp 18 Butterflies 66 Total 380 Lifers 104View attachment 1464300View attachment 1464301
Rich