21st

We started the day in mid-Channel 94km south of Fowey, with grey skies, a sea state three and a large swell from the west. Things were a little slow to get going for the first couple of hours, particularly on the bird front, but from about halfway sightings increased quite dramatically.

Bird of the day (again) was yet another Pomarine Skua – a nice adult this time, complete with ‘spoons’ at the end of the elongated tail feathers. Sadly, it didn’t stick around long enough to get a photo. Thanks to the calm seas we managed to pick up the odd small flock of Storm Petrels and a few Puffins (photos 1 & 2 – from previous Peltics). It’s now the second-best year for Puffin (after the phenomenal 2021), although a total of 61 isn’t much to write home about. We really don’t expect to see many Puffin on this survey as most should be out to the west of Ireland in the Atlantic at this time of year.

As we came closer inshore, we started picking up feeding flocks gathered around feeding tuna. The flocks were mainly gulls and Gannets but there were also a few Manx Shearwaters.

We’d had a good run of Common Dolphin sightings, almost from the start of the transect, and finished with 13 encounters involving 92 individuals. We also added another five Harbour Porpoise to the tally for the survey, still very few being seen though, especially as conditions inshore today were very favourable.

The transit to the next transect produced yet more feeding flocks of birds gathering around feeding tuna (photos 3 & 4) and it was interesting to see quite a few Balearic Shearwaters in amongst them.

As we turned on to the next transect, we could see feeding flocks to port of the transect line, we were going to have a few busy moments. The first flock was just a few Kittiwakes and shearwaters, most importantly for us, as it’s a target species, there were several Balearic Shearwaters amongst the Manx (photo 5).

Shortly after we came on to a larger flock, this one consisted of over 100 gulls, 15 Balearic and five Manx Shearwaters, a few Gannet and two Arctic Skuas (photo 6 – from a previous Peltic). We’ve seen very few Arctic Skuas so far this survey, these two bringing us up to five, only one more than the number of Pomarines we’ve seen.

There had also been a few Common Dolphins associated with the feeding flocks, and one or two had broken off from feeding to come in and bow ride for a short time (photo 7).

As we headed south the edge of the cloud that had been slowly creeping towards us from the west made it past the sun meaning glare just to starboard of the bow, not great. Although by this time sightings had tailed off and there was hardly anything to be seen anyway, apart from 40 or so Great Black-backed Gulls dotted along the transect line sat around on the water. Occasionally we’d get too close for comfort, and they’d take flight (photo 8), fly a few metres then land again.

We had an early finish this afternoon, we broke off for a trawl and timings meant we wouldn’t restart the transect until tomorrow. It was a shame there weren’t more birds to look at while we had such glorious conditions (photo 9) but we did have a lovely sunset to watch (photos 10 & 11).

22nd

The day started with some lovely colours in the eastern sky (photo 12), although they were soon replaced with grey and occasional light showers. The forecast had suggested fairly light winds but, in the event, there was an angry looking sea state five to survey in.

Between the sea state and the glare (the showers were short-lived) it was a tough morning and, apart from a gathering of gulls in the wake of a trawler, there were very few birds to be seen.

As we made our way to the nest transect, we could see an odd-looking ship ahead, turned out to be one that could lower itself in the water to allow its cargo to be floated on, in this case the hull of a cargo ship (photo 13).

The new transect, heading back towards the French coast, continued where the last one left off and we recorded just five birds in the first two hours. Things looked up for a short time when we came across some Manx and Balearic Shearwaters (photo 14) but they didn’t last very long.

As we neared the coast, we picked up some Common Dolphin coming into the ship (photo 15 & 16) and had very distant views of three Bottlenose Dolphins (at last).

We had just enough time left to get over to the next transect to run it for 20 minutes before sunset (photo 17), although the only bird recorded was an Arctic Skua.

Let’s hope for a little more wildlife to be seen tomorrow when we resume this transect.