A promising South-Easterly was forecast and that's exactly what was delivered. I arrived early at Selsey, with expectations being that it needs to be today as then the weather swings round to a steady stream of wet south-westerlies tomorrow, which is never good for seabird passage at the Bill.
It was again promising early on, with a
Whimbrel, then some
Common Scoter moving East, then groups of
Common/Arctic Terns and
4 Little Gulls. The Tern movement continued for a while before slowing and the local
Great Northern Divers were performing their morning fly-round and then the first
Pomarine Skua at 6.15am and an
Artic Skua flew past about half an hour later were great signs but it seemed to go into a lull for about an hour and a half - then it took off .
At 8.30 the first big flock of
Pomarine Skuas went through, with 10 birds, followed shortly after by another 4, and this seemed to set the scene for the next few hours when these amazing looking birds would appear and gracefully fly through to the East. my biggest single flock before today was 7 birds. The biggest flock today was 15 birds ! - I stayed until around 2pm and in that time notched up an incredible
54 Poms ! - Those that stayed until dusk recorded 74 in total. I also totalled
12 Arctic Skuas, Red-throated Diver, over
520 Common Scoter, 65 Common/Arctic Terns., 57 Sandwich Terns, 20 little Terns, 12 Bar-tailed Godwit and 5
Whimbrel, 1 Knot, 5 Sanderling, 8 Brent Geese, 3 Swift, 7 Swallows.
A very pleasing day !
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| 7 Pomarine Skuas |
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| Flock of 10 - rather spread out |
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| Another 4 .. with a dark phase bird with big spoons ! |
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| A different 4 |
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| 2 Arctic Skuas |
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| Female Eider |
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