Monday 12 March 2012

An opportunity missed?

The Safari drove down the prom this morning on the way to work glancing at the sea with eager anticipation as it was glass calm, although there was a lot of misty low cloud.
As soon as wee were able we grabbed the scope and scootled off across the road. Visibility was better than expected(!) but still a little limiting We set about counting the Common Scoters in the distance and got a figure around 5000. Nothing with them as we could make out though.
The very low tide meant there was acres of beach but all the action was down at the water's edge between the bait diggers. 300 or so Oystercatchers, a few Sanderlings and two Turnstones. We decided to have a peek north of the outfall pipe and found another 300 Oystercatchers but nothing else - where are the Ringed Plovers???
At lunchtime the very high tide was on the way in and visibility was somewhat improved...what a difference...now we could estimate about 10,000 Common Scoters. A Great Crested Grebe was the only thing that broke the scoter monopoly.
Did we see a roll of a Harbour Porpoise...twice!!! or were they just shadows of larger wavelets? A porp was seen earlier a little to the north...so did we or didn't we....if we did it was far from conclusive :-(
Where to next? Roll on tomorrow.
In the meantime let us know what the visibility's gonna be like in your outback tomorrow.
No chance of any pics today.

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