Whilst we had been chasing after rare waders, the poor weather had produced a massive movement of Great Shearwaters off Porthgwarra yesterday afternoon. So we decided to again get up at 5.00am and we were at Porthgwarra and set up for our seawatch as the sun was rising.
Manx Shearwaters were already passing through, though not in the numbers we had experienced yesterday, a couple of Balearic Shearwaters passed by very close inshore as did an adult dark phase Arctic Skua while five Sooty Shearwaters also flew west. Eventually our hard worked paid off as we got on a couple of Great Shearwaters flying west, and over the two hours we were at Porthgwarra we notched up somewhere in the region of twenty of these impressive tubenoses.
With the hoped for Great Shearwater safely ticked off, and Mickey, Nigel and Paul being thrilled to bits with a lifer, we returned to the car and set off back up the road to Polgigga in the hope of seeing the Black Kite we had missed yesterday. However, it didn't look good, and when a local birder told us it tended to show around about 11.00am we popped down the road to the Apple Tree Cafe at Trevescan for a cooked breakfast.
After a much needed refuelling we drove back to Polgigga and started scanning the area. After quarter of an hour of scanning just about every bird in the air Nigel gave a cry and we all watched the Black Kite soar over the village and towards us. We were treated to a real spectacle as the bird quartered the fields in front of us, and as predicted by the Cornish birder we had seen earlier, it was just gone 11.00am.
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