It had been a really quiet week weather wise, with high-pressure locked in over the UK and the lack of wind, slight northerly / north-easterly breeze, coupled with high humidity, led to a week of poor visibility, sea-mist and fog.
However, word on the street last night was that a favourable south-westerly breeze would be present and visibility would be as good as it gets…migration would start in earnest and there’d be a veritable bird-fest. All I can say is, do not rely on us to advise the best day and time for a BBQ because what we (I) actually got was a dose of the doldrums and dense fog; visibility wasn’t anything more than 300m at any point throughout the watch and was often only as much as 100m.
The promenade was very quiet with few dog-walkers, cyclists or joggers, but of those that did happen to walk past a bloke with a big telescope pointed seaward in dense fog, almost all gave me a very peculiar look 😉
It wasn’t all peculiar looks as one cheerful chap did engage in conversation and he wanted my advice on whether the fog would lift (see above); he was taking the helicopter to the offshore gas rig at 10am – I gave him a wry smile and suggested he bought a book in the heliport lounge (The fog eventually cleared at around 12 noon and I hope he got to work).
What birds that were about could only really be heard, unless they were directly overhead and there weren’t too many of those.
All in all it was quite a meditative morning spent in hope rather than expectation; there is of course always tomorrow and apparently there will be a nice south-westerly and visibility will be as clear as a bell…I’ll not hold my breath!
It is however, always good to have a highlight from any session, and todays highlight manifested itself when I was panning the scope (expectantly) through the fog, trying to pick up anything that wasn’t grey and happened across a Guillemot, Uria aalge – I managed to get a bit of film of said bird and we now have ‘Guillemots in the Mist’, the unheralded sequel to the Sigourney Weaver classic, Gorillas in the Mist. The Guillemot even waved to say hello. The film was shot in full-glorious technicolour but you’d never know it 🙂 and a copy is below for your unbridled enjoyment.
I made a tactical withdrawal at 09:45 and as always. look forward to tomorrow!
The full Trektellen count can be viewed if you click here. NB:- It isn’t pretty!