Porthgwarra - Sat 3 Sep

A change of scenary this weekend and a visit to Cornwall. I had been invited to join three friends, Mickey and Nigel from Reading and Paul from Norwich, who were staying in Penzance for a few days. Unfortunately, work commitments meant I had been unable to meet up with them until Friday night (driving down straight from work), which meant I'd missed out on a pelagic...but fortunately, over the weekend I connected with all but one of the species they had picked up.
Anyway, we were up at 5.00am and at Porthgwarra and all set up for a three hour seawatch by about 6.30am. There was a steady passage west of Manx Shearwaters, and we also saw a couple of Balearic Shearwaters, three or so Sooty Shearwaters, and two Great Skuas. A juvenile Arctic Tern also passed by along with the commoner seabirds. An Ocean Sunfish was an unexpected find as it drifted by fairly close inshore and a Chough flew in and fed on the cliff top near us for ten minutes.
As the sea bird passage dried up we headed out on to the moorland to the north. There was not a lot going on with regard to migrants, but we saw a single Whinchat, a couple of Wheatears and two Yellow Wagtails flew over. Pick of the punch though was a Wryneck which Nigel picked out in flight before it landed in the base of a small tree where it spent at least quarter of an hour preening. I managed a couple of record shots through the drizzle.

Walking back to the car we saw several Chiffchaffs and Whitethroats and a Peregrine flew over. By now it was gone 11.00am so we bought a pasty and ate our brunch before heading off in land.