Wednesday 17th February: Marazion & Mousehole

It was another day of rather slim picking on the birding front sadly.The day dawned to torrential rain and strong winds as forecast and with a BT engineer due to come some time between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. to try and fix our internet and phone services we had to stay at the cottage anyway. Accordingly we decided to crack on with our DIY all morning and then to spend the afternoon out and about. We made good progress on the DIY front and the engineer came and fixed a few things that were rather old and worn in our set-up though he did say that given how far we were from the exchange we were never going to get a good internet service where we were but at least the phone was working again now. In the dismal weather I saw precious little on the bird front while working with just the Kestrel and a large flock of Jackdaws being noteworthy.

In the afternoon we first headed out to Marazion where I blagged a brief stop off at the flooded field behind Longrock pool. The reason for this was that the Glossy Ibis had been reported again there this morning but there was no sign of it when I looked. I did see a Red-legged Partridge, a couple of dozen Curlew and 6 Canada Geese but that was about it. We headed on and parked up by the Jordans car park and had a little wander along the beach towards the Red River mouth and back again. Apart from a few Rock Pipits and the usual commoner gull species there was little of note.

Marazion Rok Pipit

Gulls loafing at the Red River mouth

To round off our outing we next headed over to Mousehole as, fired up by the re-appearance of the Yank Herring Gull yesterday,  I wanted to have a crack at the evening gull roost on St. Clements Island. We first had a bit of a wander around the village and then I left the rest of the family to it whilst I headed back up the hill to the Rock Pool Café which was the traditional viewing point. There I met up with a few of the locals and we all grilled the rock together. I picked out a much darker looking 1st winter Herring Gull though Mush (the resident gull guru) didn't rate it. Between us we found a few more darker birds though nothing good enough to pass muster. The highlight of the watch was a pod of Common Dolphins which passed by behind the rock. After that it was back home, via our daily stop-off at Sainsburys of course, to pick up a bit of shopping. 

St. Clements