After a quiet Spring, it was great to get Autumn off to an excellent start. First off, yesterterday (1st August) saw Thor Veen & Arjen Van t'Hof and myself set off at the ludicrously early hour of 3:00 am to St Ives to join several other local birders on a fishing boat pelagic organised by Paul Freestone from Cornwall birding. About seven miles out, after stirling work by Roysten on the chum and fishing (I never knew Mackerel were attracted to chum), the shout went up - Wilson's Petrel! A lifer for me! After getting on the first, I happened to notice there were two and reckon I just got in there with the shout, so I suppose I can even have it self-found, although in all honesty credit goes to Paul for organising the trip and the albatross crew & Thor for shouting the first. Final haul for the morning also included stonking views of Bal Shear, about 30 stormies, two Arctic Skuas, 3 Common Terns, an Arctic Tern, 3 Puffins, a large shearwater spp, a Med Gull, an Ocean Sunfish & two Risso's Dolphins.
Second off - today saw myself down at Windmill Farm on the Lizard. Walking back to the van after a fruitless visit to Ruan Pool, I heard what sounded very much like a Hoopoe. It being early August, not April and Cornwall, not Spain, I didn't really believe my ears, but after about a 10 minute search of the adjacent fields, sure enough, up flew a Hoopoe heading towards the goat willow. Seem to have developed a habit of getting out of season migrants. In true fashion, after reaching for my camera in an attempt to digibin it, it buggered off towards Predannack Airfield and I couldn't relocate it, despite searching for about an hour. I gave up on it and headed for a seawatch, which produced Bonxie and common tern, which were notable only insofar as both were, rather embarrassingly, patch ticks.
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