Yes indeedy, there is news of a full fat patch tick from Galley. Wednesday pm had been looking good for a seawatch for a few days, so I was up there as soon as I heard that there were a few bits beginning to move. At first, there was just a trickle of cory's shearwaters along with the occasional sooty and the usual numbers of manx.
However, as the afternoon progressed and the south west wind continued to increase, things gradually picked up. A couple of bonxies went through along with two arctic terns, while numbers of storm petrels began to pick up. After a couple of hours, I got on a gliding "stormie" that was fairly close in - wilson's petrel! We watched it for several minutes as it "bounced" over the waves, hardly flapping at all. No white on the underwing, and a pale bar on the upperwing - excellent!
Numbers of cory's continued to build, with the odd great shearwater going by too. Things were looking good with the wind and cloud cover building up nicely. Then disaster struck, as one of our party (thankfully not me), was summoned home by circumstances that he couldn't control. Bravely, I decided to stick it out alone, after promising not to get anything "too good".
Things settled down with cory's steadily moving through in ones and two, when I picked up a small skua - adult long-tailed skua, complete with tail streamers! Very nice, and I hoped not likely to get me in too much strife.
Into the last half hour then, and as the sky continued to darken, I got onto a bird that I didn't recognise, flapping and gliding steadily west but not banking that much, just beyond the close stream of passing manxies. Clearly smaller than manx, my first thought was "what is that?", followed closely by my second thought "wtf is that?" I briefly entertained the possibility of it being a fea's, but then it banked, showing very clean, white underwings, belly and tail, with a narrow dark border to the underwing. The wing tips looked rounded too. The upperwing didn't look as dark as manx, and appeared to have a paler patch on the outer wing, but the light wasn't great for seeing much detail. I could see the bird lifting its head a couple of times as it flew along, and saw it had a white "face" with a dark dot for an eye. At this point I realised that the bird had to be a little shearwater, but then promptly lost it in the scope. A brief moment of panic, before I scanned further right, and got on it again. By now, the bird was flying directly away from me, but the flight pattern was strikingly reminiscent of a common sandpiper, with flicking beats and short glides - amayzing!
Once I stopped shaking, I packed up and went home. I had some explaining to do....
Do I win five pounds?
