Sea-watching and Stormies

With reports of a movement of seabirds from coastal watchpoints, I headed to Druridge for a sea-watch on Saturday afternoon.

I arrived at quarter to five and it was quite quiet a first with a few distant manx shearwaters beyond the pot flags. There were a lot of fulmars and a few roseate terns were flying by and feeding. I had my first of two sooty shearwaters, which was about two-thirds out, at about half five, the second one was later and closer. 

The manx shearwaters kept coming, some very close and a couple of arctic skuas went through together in line with the flags. Just after 6.15 I got onto a pale skua about half-way out - a very pale adult pomarine skua 'with spoons'  - bonus! It was interesting that this bird hadn't been seen at Newbiggin so presumable had been sat on the sea somewhere before flying past Druridge?

Just after the 'Pom' a Fea's petrel was reported past Whitburn. It would take it at least and hour and a half to get to Druridge and the light would be fading but I thought I would hang on. I had lots more manx, another arctic skua but not much else. When the Fea's hadn't been seen at St. Mary's or Newbiggin it was time to head home  - It was a chilly night and I was freezing!

The evening forecast was light winds and no rain so we decided to have a last try for storm petrels. We've never tried to catch any this late in the year before, our previous latest session was 8th August, but worth a try.

When we arrived on the beach and got the nets set up, there was big, bright full moon - it was almost like daylight! Not good for catching birds as they would see the net. The forecast predicted increasing amounts of cloud as the night went on. 

We were joined by Laura Shearer, Paul Stewart, Irene Ajo and the Farooqi's and to our amazement we caught a storm petrel just before half-past ten, the earliest we've caught one by a whole hour - and in what we thought were impossible conditions. We had the nets up until 12.30 and didn't catch anything else so we packed up and went home.

Storm Petrel (Photo: Laura Shearer)

That will be our last session for this year. We've had two sessions this year and caught four storm petrels and one Leach's petrel.

Ringing at both ends of the day

This blog post could've been called 'Burning the candle at both ends' as that is exactly what I did yesterday.

We've been keen to get the nets up at Druridge to do some ringing since we got back from Galloway, but the actual weather or the forecasted weather, which are rarely the same thing, has prevented us.

The forecast for yesterday morning was for the wind to drop by 7am and to be overcast. So not a really early start, but early enough, to let the wind drop, which it did a bit but the cloud cover was zero. We had the nets up by 7am and there seemed to be a lot of warbler activity, with lots of willow warblers or ciffchaffs feeding in the sunlight on the upper branches of the bushes. They must've stayed there as we didn't catch many. A fly-through collared dove was my first on the patch this year - it's common species like this that excite the patch-worker.

It was warblers that we mostly caught;

Willow Warbler -3
Blackcap - 3
Whitethroat - 1
Sedge Warbler - 1
Reed Warbler - 1
Garden Warbler -1

The garden warbler is indicative of migration as this species doesn't breed at Druridge and is a species that we have rarely caught in recent years.

We only caught 17 birds all morning, so there was some time between checking the nets to have a play with my new macro lens, which is also good a good 'portrait' lens for birds in the hand.

juvenile willow warbler

Juvenile whitethroat

Juvenile sedge warbler

Juvenile garden warbler - a scarce visitor to Druridge

I had a go at some insect photography between net-checking. I'll post some photos later inthe week when I've identified them all, but here is a taster...

Small copper butterfly

So, I mentioned burning the candle at both ends... whizz forward 12 hours and we were back at Druridge, just as it got dark to try to catch storm petrels on the beach. We were joined by Laura Shearer and Jenna Berry.

This is the fifth summer we've tried to ring storm petrels at Druridge. Touch-wood, we've never failed to catch birds and last night was no exception. We've only ever caught one bird before midnight and that was last summer, so it was a surprise when Janet checked the nets at 11.40 and found our first storm petrel of the evening.

We were even more surprised by the next bird, which we caught at 12.20... This one was bigger and it had a wing bar on the upper wing - a Leach's petrel.

We controlled a Leach's petrel in 2016 (read the story here) that had been originally ringed on the Isle of May and been caught again on the Farne Islands before we caught it. Last night's bird was un-ringed. 

Leach's Petrel - They have an incredibly 'steep' forehead.(Photo: L Shearer)

Janet processing the Leach's  - you can see the wing bar in this photo.(Photo: L Shearer)

We went on to catch another two storm petrels at 12.40 and 01.20. As we were about to pack up, just before 2am we heard singing from above our heads - was sleep deprivation kicking in, had we heard too much petrel noise - no, it was a Leach's petrel flying above us singing back to the tape. It didn't go into the net, but it begs the question - was it the same bird we'd caught earlier or a different bird, and if so, how many are out there?

All in all, a long but enjoyable day (and night...)