We started early on Friday 30th September, Alison, Emma and I leaving home at 4am. Having had a trouble-free journey and the usual break for breakfast at the Exeter services we had three stops in Cornwall before arriving at our B&B in Ludgvan near Penzance. First stop was at Rock, a lovely village on the Camel estuary on the north Cornish coast - where we failed to see the Dalmatian Pelican that had been here for the past few days (as it flew to Devon overnight). We had seen this bird on our trip to Devon earlier in the year, but thought it worth a second look. We had a pleasant stroll along the beach and stopped for some light refreshment. Second stop was the Pentire peninsula at Newquay where we had an interesting walk in the tidal gully on the south of the peninsula, obviously at low tide but boots off and wading in places, and out to Pentire Point - here we failed to see the Bairds Sandpiper that had been here for the past few days (it turned up on Davidstow airfield the next day). Third stop was just east of Marazion where a Hudsonian Whimbrel has been present for nearly a year - but managed to conceal itself from us today. Despite dipping on all three of our target species, an inauspicious start to a birding holiday, we did see parts of Cornwall we had not previously seen and had a generally enjoyable day.
Saturday 1st October: Early full English breakfast and off to the Scilly Parking carpark and onto the Scillonian III for our 09:45 sailing. Ben had travelled on the overnight train from Norwich via London and met us on board.
Just out of Penzance harbour we found a small pod of (probably bottle-nosed) dolphins. En-route we found a Great Shearwater, ~20 Manx Shearwaters, 2 Storm-petrels and a Great Skua.
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After settling in to our October home at Peacehaven on St Marys, we had a stroll around the coast as far as Porth Hellick Down. Here we found a confusing wheatear. Having enlisted some help from some old friends (Will Scott, Spider, Ralph and Nit) it was eventually determined to be an oiled Northern Wheatear ---- Oh well, never mind!
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Sunday 2nd October
Monday 3rd October - St Agnes
The main aim of visiting St Agnes today was a Red-eyed Vireo. We failed to see that and in fact didn't find much else of interest in the way of birds. We did find several washed up Portuguese Man-o-wars (I'm told that is correct, rather than Men-o-war); and we got chased by a bull which I then photographed when safely behind a gate.
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Eventually retired to the Turks Head for a pint and took the statutory Scilly House Sparrow photo.
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Tuesday 4th October - Tresco
Main target for today was a Sora, that was found in exactly the same place as the one we found 2 years ago - but this was a UK tick for Ben. We were successful though the views were somewhat unsatisfactory.
Main target for today was a Sora, that was found in exactly the same place as the one we found 2 years ago - but this was a UK tick for Ben. We were successful though the views were somewhat unsatisfactory.
Wednesday 5th October
Nothris congressariella (above) - probably the scarcest moth of the week. Confined to Cornwall, IOS and Lundy, it is a very local resident species. Although good migrants seemed to be obtained on St Agnes, Peacehaven had little shelter from the strong winds this week.
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Thursday 6th October
Typically I chose today to leave my big lens behind and had to settle for photographing the bird of the week - Caspian Tern - using the 60x zoom on my little Lumix. |
Friday 7th October
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