Just back (happily in one piece - it was a particularly eventful climb back up the cliff in these challenging conditions) from a six-hour seawatch, with the promising scenario of gale force northerlies, raging seas, an airflow from the Arctic and the time free to relish it. As it turned out, it was high on aesthetic drama but low on birds (at least regarding abundance), with no big numbers on the move as one would wish for in such circumstances; there were, however, some enjoyable highlights, and it was a day very well spent in the company of the birds and the birds alone.
Little Auks are a classic quarry in such conditions, and happily, 14 made the notebook by the end of the day; slightly less happily (at least for the bird involved), one was the more literal quarry of a now well-fed Great Black-backed Gull (see below). Two classic hoped-for species had the good grace to bullet through at close-range through the white horses - a Leach's Storm-petrel mid-morning and a Grey Phalarope an hour or so later. Other notables included a Great Northern Diver close in the bay and nine duck species including a female Long-tailed.
