Friday 11th August - Porthgwarra

At the start of the week the wind for today had been forecast to be a quite strong south westerly though by Thursday evening it was a much more moderate forecast, for the morning at least, though predicted to increase in the afternoon. With a bit of rain thrown into the forecast as well, we'd decided as a family that the rest of the gang would head of to St. Ives for the day for a spot of shopping whilst I would have the day free for some sea watching. A whole day of sea watching was quite a novelty for me though it a shame that the weather was distinctly mediocre on that front. Still, at around 10 a.m. I dropped the rest of the team off at the bus stop in Pendeen and headed off on the half hour journey down to PG. I parked up, bought my "all day" parking ticket from the café along with a tea "to go" and headed along the coastal path to Hella Point, wondering if there would be anyone else there. As it turned out there were about ten or so people there, including P&H, MW & TM so it was quite a sociable affair. I spent a fair bit of time nattering with P&H whom I'd not seen for a while - it was good to catch up on all the local news. 

Betony is very much the fleur du jour at the moment, with lots of it brightening
 up the coast and roadside banks all over the place

The sea watching itself was actually far better than I'd feared: visibility was good, and whilst the wind was very moderate there were enough interesting birds to keep boredom at bay. Sooties were the order of the day and we must have had a good couple of dozen during the day, with plenty of Stormies as well. Occasionally a large shear would be picked out though they all turned out to be Greats today. There was also one Bonxie, an Ocean Sun Fish and the odd Balearic in what was a very pleasant albeit rather low key session. More than once during the watch I thanked the stars for the presence of the Runnel Stone which was such a good marker that however incompetent I was at getting on other people's birds, I'd always be able to make amends when the buoy was reached. I kept hoping that one of the Stormies would turn out to be a Wilson's though sadly it was not to be. On that subject though, during our discussions some of the locals helpfully gave me pointers as to how to tell the difference between them on jizz which was very useful. I was told that "Stormies always look like they're in a great panic when they fly" (which is very true), whereas Wilson's look much more calm and in control as well as doing a lot of gliding and pattering on the water (when feeding). So at least now I know and going forward I should be able to pick it out if one should fly past me in the future.

By mid afternoon a mist started to come in and the visibility got very poor so with time marching on I took this as my cue to leave and headed back to the car. On the way back home I got a call from the St. Ives party saying that they were on the bus back but as they'd bought a large item (a small cupboard that my VLW had been looking for for a long time) could I come and pick them up. We rendezvous'd at the Pendeen stores and headed back to the cottage. By all accounts the other party had enjoyed a good time as well so it had been a successful day.

We were due to leave the next day so after dinner we started to clear up and pack up before turning in for the night.