More news from South Wales

The Safari was only able to get out onto Patch 2 for a few short minutes this morning. The tide hadn't long left the wall and was dropping rapidly leaving a strandline of shells in its wake. There were more gulls down there than we've seen for a long time, most were lined up no more than three or four deep right in the first few inches of water and they seemed to be after small fish. They were mostly Herring, Black Headed and Common Gulls in that order with a few Great Black Backs and a handful of Lesser Black Backs thrown in. Try as we might we couldn't find any odd ones out. To the south there were thousands more but the light and distance were against us. To the north there were fewer but the light was better and we picked out a large 'argentatus' Herring Gull, a dark backed ugly looking brute with more white than black in the primaries.

A few of the many

We ended up spending so much time looking at the gulls we didn't have time for a scan of the sea.

At lunchtime there was no time for another look, real work took precident so we had no more news for you.

And then mid-afternoon we got a txt from our Extreme Photographer saying he'd emailed a few photos through. We had a rough idea of what might be coming.

A week or so ago he phoned saying he'd had a bit of an Otter experience until a numpty dog walker came along and flushed it just as it was getting really close and hadn't got wind of him secreted in the undergrowth.

At another site he's found a bit of a breakwater which he can hide behind waiting for the waders on the beach to come to him, like this Turnstone.

Close-up

So a very big thanks to him for filling up the blog with some quality on an otherwise dull day.

Where to next? More Patch 2 tomorrow and hopefully we'll have a better look at those gulls, assuming they hang around.

In the meantime let us know who's involved with a feeding frenzy in your outback.