In which the Circus finally comes to town and the wind keeps blowing

Number 2 and I headed out to do a little more sea-watching this morning. En route we picked up a migrating male marsh harrier at Troentorp, ending a personal four-month harrier drought that was beginning to get me down. It remains to be seen if I can actually see a hen harrier this spring. Nils Kjellén was already on site and reported 320 common scoter and a reasonable 'passage' of red-throated diver. I packed Number 2 into the car with her toys and she passed drawings and comments out through the window at regular intervals.

The wind was strong but had backed westerly again and the scoters were passing a little further out. Things slowed down a lot for my two hour stint, I logged just 89 common scoter but 31 red-throated divers was a reasonable effort until these too started to pass less frequently. The main difference from yesterday was the absence of gannets and the replacement of great crested grebes (1) with red-necked grebes (9). Two sandwich terns flew past and a small flock of 13 barnacle geese went west. Today's other year-tick was a brace of black-throated divers flying west in glorious plumage. Nils pointed out a migrating osprey that whilst ostensibly flying south did a nice easterly vector past our position, driven by the strong westerly wind. After two hours we had to leave and run some errands and then had time for 15 minutes at Klarningen, where there was nothing new to report.

In the afternoon I was down south so I checked out Farhult, water levels were very high and the only stuff picked up was flying by, the highlight being 7 bar-tailed godwit. Rönnen next were at least there was sone shelter and many more birds around Lilla Viken, including a flock of 50 avocet and seven gadwall. Three Sandwich terns roosted with the gulls and then I staggered back against a wind that was increasingly strong. Sandön was barely worth the effort, not an inch of mud or sand exposed and the spray flying, just two goosander! Meanwhile back in BK a northern fulmar and more gannets had been spotted...

April blow

Thass gon helluva windy! A hefty breeze from the west greeted us all this morning. After various domestic duties and a trip to Ängelholm (65 eider heading east), it was time to settle into Yttre Kattvik for a 3.5 hour sea-watching session. I was pretty quickly joined by Nils Kjellén, we were both hoping for some rare scoter action. This is the week for black and surf scoter in this neck of the woods as birds start to move from their regular wintering areas in Denmark and travel south and round into the Baltic. Sure enough plenty of common scoter were on the move and I logged 770 in the end (my best day total in BK, but half of what was seen during shorter sessions just a little north of me, birds may be dropping into the bay?). No sign of any 'rares' though and just one velvet during the session. Very few eider migrating today, most as I wrote earlier favour the overland route from Laholmsbukten. Other notable species; long-tailed duck (4), red-throated diver (15), great crested grebe (8), gannet (at least 8 - year-tick!), guillemot (1), razorbill (2) and black guillemot (4).

It is going to be windy tomorrow too so hopefully some good birds will come our way.

More sea-watching - 28/05/09

The forecast looked good but I awoke to find the wind direction had shifted southerly in the night and had failed to strengthen. It was going to go west during the morning (and did) but I feared that the southerly winds overnight would not bring us any fresh birds and I was right.

Kicked off just before five all the same and had a close gannet and fulmar pretty quickly. Spent the next three hours for another distant fulmar, a single kittiwake (year-tick) and a light passage of common scoter. I am pretty sure I spent part of the watch in the company of vismig supremo Nils Kjellén - he reminded me a bit of that other bird-finding dynamo Ken Shaw. Anyway between us we failed to see the hoped-for Manx shearwater, so a little disappointing. Maybe we will get more windy weather in June...