Sunday 29 July 2012

National Whale and Dolphin Watch - Day 3

The Safari looked out of the bedroom window to see that the tub of Runner Beans in the garden had blown over - not a good sign and Frank's muddy towel on the washing line was jumping about like a raver on speed. The wind hadn't died down during the night but got stronger.

We upped the layers to five before donning the waterproofs and heading out to our watch point.
We'd imagined car parking would be easy early on a Sunday morning - wrong! There hundreds of motor-homes and fishermen along the side of the road and we had to play a game of vehicular Chinese Puzzle before we could get the Land Rover close enough in case of rain.
Looking out to sea it was lumpier than badly made custard, this wasn't going to be easy.
Passing punters kept stopping for a chat invariably telling us we wouldn't see any whales or dolphins cos the water was either too cold or too dirty or both, only a handful said it was because there was no fish; which could be (partially) true. Obviously there must be some chance of seeing them; we wouldn't sit there like a lemon freezing our nads off for four hours if there wasn't, would we?
Three Turnstones perched nicely right in front of us on the wall but were flushed by a dog walker before we could point the camera at them. So we had to make do with this Herring Gull instead.

One punter reported a dead Harbour Porpoise a couple of months ago that we hadn't heard about, 300 yards up the road from were we were sat.
Our photographer friend from the  local paper came along and took his snaps while we were sat all on our tod like Billy No-mates, he shoulda come yesterday or Friday when we were surrounded by hundreds of volunteers!
It was still windy, so windy in fact that the string holding our banner up frayed and nearly had it roller-coastering down the road.
People continued to stop for a chat which being on our own seriously reduced the amount of time spent watching, not that there was much to watch. we were just thinking we'd not even seen a Gannet yet when one turned up in the field of view, one of only two seen in the whole four hours.
The Blue Mink fishing boat was out again but no cetacean joy for them today, not like last time we saw them from here. This picture was taken only inches from where we were sat today.


In the excitement we had to count the wind turbines we could see - exactly 100 of them. In the four hours we were there they will have produced enough electricity to keep Base Camp's lights on for somewhere around 200 or more years!

 The turbines weren't the only ones enjoying the breezy conditions.


With only a few minutes remaining an ominous looking squall appeared traveling swiftly towards us but would it reach us before the time bell rang?

At the bell our grand totals for the session were
Common Scoters - 8, 2 + 2 on the sea close in with four flying south in the distance
Gannets - 2, 1 + 1
Sandwich Terns - 6, 2 + 3 + 1 all going north
Cormorants - 2, 1 + 1
Common Tern -1 north
Manx Shearwater - 1 south very distant
Common Gull - 1, our first of the autumn.
We were glad to get back to Base Camp and a warming cuppa, and fortunately we beat the squall.
Where to next? Back to work in the morning and good old Patch 2 where we will be doing another hour's watch from 12 noon until 1pm under the Mirror Ball.
In the meantime let us know what the weather didn't allow you to see in your outback.

1 comment:

Warren Baker said...

5 layers and its only July! :-)