Seawatching

I finally managed to catch up with some large shear action over the last few days, as the winds picked up from the south-west.On Tues night a few of us (including infamous patch poacher Ross Geller) caught up with 282 cory's shearwaters, 127 great shearwaters, 10 sooty shearwaters, 4 bonxies and (count 'em) 4 arctic terns, which was almost a year tick, only I'd ticked one on the weekend.

On Thursday the wind picked up again so I took a long lunch break, sans lunch, and knocked in 388 greats, 310 cory's, 41 sooties and a complimentary bag of tayto cheese and onion crisps courtesy of the afore-mentioned mr geller. It was with much fear that I had to drag myself away in order to collect the pesky kids from school. However it worked out pretty well, as while waiting for additional parental cover to arrive back home, I took to scanning the bay for lost large shearwaters from the patio. This paid off rapidly in the form of a common tern feeding close in - year tick!

Returning for another couple of hours in the evening, I happened across a double oaty crunch health bar that had obviously been left as an offering to the seawatching gods by mr geller. You could nearly consider it a bribe I spose. I ate it anyway, and then promptly bagged another 70 greats, 62 cory's and 14 sooties.

Finally, skipping out of bed lightly at crack of dawn this am, despite Basil Faulty trying his best to cripple me with large amounts of soapy beer the previous evening, I made it back to Galley for a spectacular feast of large shearwaters. A bit of a slow start, but greats  and cory's were belting past good style by 1pm when I noticed that there was something smaller going by too, with very dark underwings and bright white underparts - finally, a fea's-type petrel for the year - brilliant! Called it quits after things dried up around half three, with a whopping 1,479 great shears, 824 cory's, 85 sooties, 10 bonxies and a fea's - fantastic!