late seawatch adds nicely to year list

This post could equally have been called 'Balearic beauty'

I've been seawatching, I left it a bit late, not arriving at at Druridge til 1730 and judging by the totals on RBA I missed the best of the days action. I did 2 1/2 hours through til 8pm when, to be honest, it was getting tricky to pick up manxies out by the pot flags.

Bird of the evening was a relatively close (for Druridge) Balearic shearwater, virtually the first bird decent bird I saw, going north at 1735, this is my third for Druridge and all of them have been at similar distance.

I didn't bother counting kittiwakes (or the terns) , by far the most numerous birds, with long 'strings' and groups going through most of the evening. I collected a few year ticks including; sooty shearwater, only 1 though, bar-tailed godwit, knot and grey plover (summer plumage  - nice)

Totals were (1730-2000):

Balearic shearwater 1

cormorant 4

manx shearwater 47

sooty shearwater 1

fulmar 48

gannet 358

sandwich tern - gave up counting

common tern  - ditto

arctic tern  - ditto

great black-backed gull 9

bar-tailed godwit 1

teal 18

lesser black-backed gull 6+

kittiwake 1000+

red-throated diver 7

common scoter 26

roseate tern 5

arctic skua 3

bonxie 3

tufted duck 4

guillemot 5

red-breasted merganser 5

dunlin 1

oystercatcher 1

knot 1

eider 4

grey plover 1

ringed plover 5

Yesterday, I walked from Berwick to Coldingham along the Berwickshire Coast path with work with TAC and others, there wasn't much time for birding, but an adult peregrine feeding fledged young at Marshall Meadows was nice,  in Scotland we had more pergrines including an adult and juvenile whilst we were having lunch at Burnmouth, also nice to see were coastal ravens.

Just south of Coldingham in a scrubby dene, TAC  and I picked out a calling warbler which was different, but something we had both heard before, a disyllabic call, we only got the briefest of views, it was certainly a phylloscopus warbler, but it didn't show much. In flight it was green-grey, when it flitted through the bushes I could see it was white below, but that is all we saw, we had to catch up with the others in order to catch our bus back to Berwick, when it flew further up the dene, we had to leave it, but we are pretty much certain it was greenish warbler.

133 balearic shearwater

134 sooty shearwater

135 knot

136 bar-tailed godwit

137 grey plover