The Safari hasn't a great lot of news today. We looked at the sea on the drive to work and it was still a bit chopped up even though the wind had dropped and changed to an offshore-ish direction. We got out as soon as we could and found very little. Lots of Oystercatchers on the huge expanse of beach was the largest number we've seen since the spring but they were well scattered dots in the distance and we didn't bother to count them. Three much nearer summer plumaged Sanderlings did make the page of the notebook.
Not much was out to sea and it took a while to find a fairly distant Grey Seal in the choppy conditions.
We picked up a few terns in the haze most looked like Sandwich Terns by their jizz. Nearer a few Common Terns were identifiable but a really active 'paper dart' of tern kept plunge diving, flipping up and diving again was a Little Tern (P2 #72), at last we've connected with the tiny mite, everyone else has had them along the coast so we're glad to have caught up with one behaving so spectacularly...looked like it was on speed compared to the much more sedate Common Terns! Then we realised the Grey Lag Geese we had last weekend were P2 #71!
Away in the haze a dark long winged shape had a lot of skua about it but there's no way we could get anything on it and it didn't do any chasing before disappearing in to the wobbly shimmer on the horizon.
At lunchtime the tide was in but if anything the birds were even further away and nothing new was added to the days tally apart from about 45 Common Scoters.
Back at Base Camp we had a brew with our Extreme Photographer who had been slogging away dismantling the last of the Base Camp's previous occupier's attempts at DIY - he was a total DIY disaster and whoever did the last electrical re-wire OMG...scary, scary, scary!!!
Anyway whilst we were chatting this Small White landed on one of his upturned buckets.
Where to next? A safari to somewhere we've not been for years, hopefully our quarry(s) won't have done a bunk overnight.
In the meantime let us know what's 'kicked' the bucket in your outback.
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