Cley sea watch - 29 Aug

The weather chart was very promising. NW gale force winds veering N in the afternoon, a bit of rain. This coincided with a gap in my social obligations. Luck me. So, I got up when I woke up and headed the 100 miles, 2hrs 30, to Cley to arrive around 8:45 ish.

A few lines of birders, I tagged on the end got my scope up and already there were a few seabirds belting east. This was going to be epic!

Lots of birds just knocking around too. Eider on the sea, Sandwich Terns going up and down, a couple of Fulmars going west and many flocks of ducks going W, mainly Teal but a few Wigeon and some Common Scoter. Some year ticks already. Then a shout from someone and an adult Little Gull fluttering along the tide line. This was going to be Epic!

I was now properly settled in, ready to get some decent sightings, and ... and ... for the next few hours or so the only thing that moved was rain. In a horizontal on-shore direction. The encroaching rain clouds seems to have cleared everything out. There were a couple of gaps in which a distant Gannet went west, and a Bonxie did a magical trick of flying towards us from the east and moving simultaneously further away, a kind of seabird moon-walk, courtesy of the gail force wind.

Around 1pm I decided that was it. I was epically wet and wind blown. There were some shadows and flickers out there on the edge of the rain belt, but nothing I could even tie down to a genus let alone species. I learned it is one thing to spot some decent onshore winds with a few showers on a weather chart, it is another to be trying to identify birds whilst stopping your tripod from falling over in a blizzard of rain.

Anyway, that early activity. Three small skua-shaped birds went east, then another one. Long arcs of gliding. The area of the line I was in was unclear, thinking Shearwaters, maybe Manx. I am no expert, or even averagely decent sea-watcher, but they weren't Manxies. Also, my optics were better (Kowa 883), and these were soft brownish. Later I spoke with someone who said the three were two Arctic Skua and a Long-tailed Skua, one of the three being clearly smaller.

Now, I don't know. But familiarity is a key indicator, and there was not much familiar about these birds. Honestly, if someone said they were all long-tailed I'd have believed it. But deciding that those telling you something other than what you want to hear don't know what they are talking about and those who tell you exactly what you want to hear are the experts is a dangerous game of self-delusion. So they will just have to go down as Skua sp.

In summary, there was lots of action before I was there, according to Birdguides there was lots of action after I was there (more long-tailed and a Sabine's), but when I was there there was naff all. There was a time when I would have been annoyed, but these days I am at peace with the fact that I cannot be everywhere all the time, I only have certain windows of opportunity, and I see what I see. Also, who knows if I'd have seen the latter birds, or agreed with the ID.

Increasingly, its the not-knowing that's the fun, the time spent trying to work out exactly what it is that's in front of me that's the excitement. Gull-Billed Tern? Yep. Saw that Alton Water one. Nice. Tick. But zero excitement factor. Brown shape hurtling past half a mile out? Now that's interesting ...

Update. Steve Gantlett posted some great photos of a Long-tailed Skua going past Cley at 11:45. I was there during and after, and no-one mentioned it. Just shows what is going past and you don't notice. 

I was struck, again, by the contrast of the various posts on twitter with confident posts with totals stated boldly and the experience of being in with several watchers and us collectively not really having a clue on what those birds passing at some distance were.