bring on the fish

No birds today but a minimum of 6 bottlenose dolphins were feeding and splashing around close in at Long Strand all day - they don't normally hang around so long.

royal tern how are ya?

A ringed plover at Long Strand this evening brought up 100 for the patch year list - slightly ahead of the last 2 years too, despite the lack of sightings recently. Who cares about missing royal tern anyway, when this kind of quality turns up on the patch? (well, I do, but them's the breaks).

swifts

Three swifts zooming around over the house this evening were new for the year (99).  I never seem to get them early at Galley, its always 2 or 3 weeks after they are "in" before they show up here - great birds though, one of my favourites.

here come the skuas

A great morning seawatching today with a good movement of skuas west past Galley between 8.00 and 10.30 am. In all, we had a total of 81 pomarine skuas, 21 bonxies and 5 arctic skuas, plus 4 storm petrels, 3 common scoter and 2 great northern divers, which has boosted the year list a bit (98).

update from portugal

rufous bush chat oml ya bas!