When Shearwaters are Great

I'm pretty sure it was officially blowing a gale at West Bay this morning, and the sea looked amazing. Despite having spent the previous post moaning about the capricious nature of our local seawatching and my inability to predict it, I couldn't help a jaunty step as I strode towards the shelter. At 06:46 I pressed the start button on my BirdTrack app, and scanned the heaving waves. Straight away there were birds. Several Gannets, and a couple of very distant small shearwater sp that popped momentarily into view before vanishing forever. The subliminal shearwater theme repeated itself once or twice more, but nothing allowed identification or was even close enough to. It was very frustrating.

Despite conditions looking fantastic, in truth they were not. A SSW is virtually straight onshore here, but not quite. It actually comes in slightly from the left. Which means I have to sit at the west end of the shelter and hope that birds come from my right, i.e. head east. But today almost everything went west, essentially with the wind. Consequently they are whisked along like leaves in a storm. Combine that with the low vantage point and enormous sea, and you wind up with nanosecond views before your bird is swallowed by a bottomless trough. At 07:13 the local WhatsApp group fired up, with Ian M reporting 5 Balearics W on his first scan at Beer, 15 or so miles to the west, where the curve of Lyme Bay turns a SSW into a much more favourable wind. Meanwhile, not one of my probable Balearics made it into print.

After half an hour or so, and just a Med Gull (heading E!) recorded, I was getting a bit disheartened. At that point a close bird lifted into my scope view and hung briefly in the air before dipping behind a wave. I could hardly believe it. Despite mostly back-on views, the bird which had just occupied airspace normally reserved for gulls checking out the surf was undoubtedly a large shearwater. Frantically I tried to pick it up again with the scope, failed, and resorted to bins. And there it was! Swooping effortlessly above the breakers was a Cory's Shearwater. What else could it be? It was still mainly at eye level and back-on to me, but the underparts looked clean. I got it in the scope again. Yep, white as you like underneath. It was drifting slowly W, but then turned and headed back. At that moment I got a side-on view. What?! A stonking black cap and white collar, plus a gleaming white stripe twixt rump and tail. It was a Great Shearwater! I put a message out, but when I looked for it again there was no sign. I figured a two-minute loiter at West Bay had been enough, and it was now heading for Seaton.

The next hour or so flew by - cloud nine does that to you - and two Storm Petrels E, including one really close in, failed to register quite the level of wow-ness they deserved. Distant birds were by now only Gannets, and I hadn't seen any more shearwaters, large or small. And then, just before 09:00, a familiar shape sailed once again through my scope at close range. It was surely the same Great Shearwater, lingering just offshore like before. Last time I hadn't risked going for the camera, but now I had to try. I attempted to video it, and failed. Then it dropped on to the sea, and was occasionally visible when lifted on a wave. I shan't bang on about the difficulties of picking it up in the viewfinder, focusing and whatnot, but it was hard. The following collage features the best of a mediocre lot...

Great Shearwater on the sea off West Bay. Would you believe it?!

I've seen lots of Cory's Shearwaters, though only on a handful of occasions (most recently in 2016 from a Scilly pelagic - see here) but Great Shearwater is another story. Until today I had seen just one, from Berry Head some years ago, and very badly. So badly, in fact, that it has always felt like one of those naughty ticks that you ought really to erase. So this morning's Great Shearwater is basically a lifer.

I must find something else to moan about not seeing locally. Now, let me think...