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| New Brighton beach |
Four hours' seawatching at New Brighton in a frisky wind in Autumn. I should know better at my age and I loved every minute. The hope was to see some Leach's petrels, which are a local speciality in September.
In the event it was a quiet afternoon and most of the seabirds were cormorants and lesser black-backed gulls. I managed to see one Leach's petrel about two hundred yards out but none in the mouth of the Mersey. A few gannets were caught by a shaft of sunlight about a mile out. About half an hour later a dark Arctic skua passed by about halfway out, flying out towards the Crosby shore.
There were, inevitably, a lot of "I wonder what that was" birds out there. One of them was quite striking but baffling and stuck around long enough for me to take some notes.
? distant, low. smaller than lesser black-back, perhaps common gull length but more stretched out. dark but not uniform. cold and scaly like lesser black-back, no white patches or bands, dark trailing edge to wings. paler (not white) underside and underwings. sharp, long wings. back end not gull-like, more like collared dove shape, lot of tail but blunt.
Having checked my reference books I think this is an immature long-tailed skua.
A handful of sandwich terns came in and dived for fish in the surf.
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| Sandwich tern, New Brighton |
I spent quarter of an hour trying to identify a dark blob bobbing like a cork in the surf. I was sure it was an auk of some type but it was an unidentifiable rear end until it finally came level with me. It was a guillemot having a bit of trouble battling with the tide. Eventually it took a breather on the beach then had another go at it and struck lucky with a back surge and got back out to the sea.
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| Guillemot, New Brighton |
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| Guillemot, New Brighton |
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| Guillemot, New Brighton |
Stopping off for a pizza on the way back to the station I checked out the waders on the deck in the marine lake. Plenty of turnstones and a few redshanks. It's a lot early yet to be expecting any purple sandpipers.
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| Turnstones, New Brighton |
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