After a night in Hayle and a nice fry up we headed for home but not before stopping in Devon for Cirl Buntings. In the field below the car park I found a juvenile and a female in a nearby tree. The others had a few more including a male but I’d wandered the other way trying to find more but only had a fly by Sparrowhawk and a Willow Warbler.
With a record breaking El-Nino currently underway the potential for good sea birds being pushed north due to warming sea temperatures myself, Brendon Fagan, Brendan Glynn and Jim Reader decided to head SW to join the Mermaid Pelagic out of Penzance.
We set off at 5am and arrived in good time at Hayle Estuary RSPB. From The hide at Ryan’s Field I picked out my first Whimbrel of the year and on the main estuary I found 8 Greenshank and a Barnacle Goose.
After a breakfast pasty from Philp’s we headed towards Penzance where at 2 pm we set sail for a 6 hour pelagic a few miles off shore. Sadly the wind direction had turned northerly and so limited the numbers of birds. We still managed 2 Wilson’s Petrel giving me my best ever view of this species, 6 Storm Petrel, 2 Cory’s Shearwater and a juvenile Yellow-legged Gull.
