Hobbies at Oswestry

Photo: Hobby © Roland Neumann.

Working near Oswestry today and a rather dull morning was enlivened by a family party of hobbies which flew right overhead, no more than perhaps 15m above me. They were playing and calling, twisting around in the sky chasing each other. They didn't just go over, they stayed with me for three or four minutes circling around and giving me one of my greatest ever hobby experiences before disappearing over a nearby woodland. I didn't have my camera with me which was initially disappointing but perhaps it was just as well, because I could fully concentrate on the unfolding experience without watching it through a view finder and worrying about the next photo. 

Coneheads and Maidenhair at Arnside

Arnside Knott is one of our favourite walks, with views that just seem to get better and better, looking over the Kent estuary, Morecambe bay and the Lake District. The outward leg starts off as a coastal walk from Arnside and the return goes over the Knott before dropping back down into the town. It's one of the top spots in Lancashire for wildlife, which includes butterflies such as high brown fritillary, northern brown argus and Scotch Argus and it's very rich botanically with plants such as fly orchid, dark-red helleborine, maidenhair fern and Teesdale violet.

A few years ago I found a population of short-winged coneheads crickets on the saltmarsh at White Creek. The only other place I have seen these insects in north west England is at Marshside, Southport.

Ainsdale Beach

This wonderful adult male wheatear on Ainsdale beach today made a pleasant change from all of the juveniles I've seen recently. I can't say I've ever seen such a stunning autumn male before, the black mask bordered by white eye stripe and throat contrasting wonderfully with the ochre coloured breast and brown back, and note the black wings with pale fringes. Just beautiful, at least the match of any spring wheatear. Presumably the deep colours make this a Greenland race bird Leucorhoa. There were also three juvenile wheatears nearby. 

Apart from the deeper colours, Leucorhoa is also said to be larger with longer wings and a more upright stance and these photos seem to show the latter though size and wing length are harder to judge.  

Unfortunately though, I don't think that it's possible to be certain of the identification of Leucorhoa in the field.

Stac Pollaidh

My last day in the beautiful North West Highlands and it was the best day of the lot for weather. Before today I hadn't seen much of the mountains here due to mist, low cloud or drizzle, but today it all cleared up and Inverpolly was revealed in all of it's glory.

When it's like this it truly can be described as the most beautiful and spectacular part of the UK and despite the large increase in tourists this year, virtually all of it is still remote and devoid of people. Today I decided to make the most of the weather and go to the place where I was likely to get the best views of all, the summit of Stac Pollaidh..... or to be more accurate, as close to the summit as I was prepared to go.   

Stac Pollaidh is not a very high mountain, at 612m, 2008 feet it's nowhere near the height needed to qualify as a Munro but it is a very spectacular mountain largely because it rises from relatively flat and low lying ground. The actual summit is a very difficult and dangerous scramble, one the the hardest in the UK apparently and is not a place that I am remotely interested in getting to. Fortunately there is a ridge just below the summit which allows incredible views which are good enough for me and most other people.

Rhue Lighthouse

After visiting Stac Pollaidh I still had an hour to kill before I needed to leave for Inverness airport so I headed for Rhue Lighthouse just about four miles north of Ullapool on Loch Broom. 

I was on my own for most of the time, just sitting on the edge of the rocks looking out to sea. It was still and calm and very relaxing, a very pleasant end to my trip. An otter fished close by and a summer plumage red-throated diver was in the bay. Further out there were gannets and a black guillemot, but I didn't see any of the harbour porpoise that I had seen here from the ferry yesterday.

Otter

From the Ullapool to Stornoway Ferry

No visit to Ullapool is complete without a day trip on the ferry to Stornoway and back. It's not as good a dedicated whale watching trip, but at £20 a head as a foot passenger it's a lot cheaper and offers the chance of seeing a few decent cetaceans and seabirds. Today I caught the 10:30am ferry from Ullapool, we arrived at Stornoway at 1pm and left at 2pm, back in Ullapool for 4:45pm. If you want to go ashore you've hardly got time to get past the ferry car park at Stornoway before you need to be back on the boat but then that's not what I was here for. I was here for the boat journey.

The plan is pretty much the same as on the whale watching trip, look out for large groups of sea birds feeding and if you find one you may well have hit the jackpot. The only problem is the ferry just ploughs on, sticking to it's set course and speed and doesn't really care too much about what you have seen. It's not going to stop to let you have a closer look, you have to rely on birds and cetaceans being close enough and obliging enough for you to get a decent look at them. 

The photo above is looking south from the ferry towards Skye, you can even make out the Old Man of Storr and in the foreground you can see a flock of gannets feeding. A couple of minutes scanning through these and a minke whale revealed itself briefly about four times. Not a great view but decent enough to get a positive identification.

Bits and pieces from Inverpolly

I shouldn't really use the label "Bits and pieces from Inverpolly" when I'm talking about some of the most beautiful of British birds in one of the most spectacular parts of the country. Today I counted five black-throated and seven red-throated divers all in summer plumage on various lochs as I drove to Ullapool and back for my ferry trip. These really are up there amongst my favourite birds, completely different species to the winter plumage birds we see around the coast. I think you should get an extra tick for summer plumage divers. 

My very first trips to Inverpolly back in the 1970's were specifically to see these birds on their breeding grounds and they still give me a thrill to this day.

Rose-coloured Starling, Stoer

Two days ago I stopped off at the tiny village of Stoer just north of Lochinver, hoping to see a rose-coloured starling that had been reported a few days earlier. I didn't see that bird but while I was looking a white-tailed eagle flew over low and provided some consolation. Today I returned and found the starling showing well on feeders in one of the gardens. Not a bad village list for me so far!

It's a rather bedraggled looking individual not helped by the dull, drizzly weather. At first I thought that it was an adult but I now consider it a 1st summer due to the brown rather than black nape.

Only my third 'adult' rose-coloured starling.

Whale watching in the Minch

When I made plans to visit northern Scotland in the middle of August, my main hope was that I would see a few whales and dolphins because late summer is a peak time for seeing them. It was always going to be a longshot because as somebody said, "there's a whole lot of nothing out there" and I expected long periods of seeing nothing except the sea, but my attitude is if you don't try you don't see so get out there and give it a go. I certainly won't see them sat at home.

There are three requirements when it comes to seeing cetaceans. Firstly you need to go to the right places, secondly you need to go at the correct time of year and finally you need a huge slice of luck. With this in mind, today was always going to be the big day, a trip out into the Minch with Hebridean Whale Cruises from Gairloch. It was the right time of year and if anybody could get me to the right places it was these guys. Now I just needed the luck.

Just getting on the trip was a mammoth achievement because the bookings go so fast, especially this year when due to Covid restrictions they have been running less trips. For three weeks prior to the bookings becoming available online I had checked five or six times a day, morning, noon and night, it was almost an obsession, hoping to be able to book for today, the 17th August and the only day I could really make this week without disrupting my entire holiday. Finally, just after midnight last Thursday, the dates appeared and at 5:30am the same day I booked my place. Less than 12 hours later the trip was sold out.

I've been on plenty of whale watching trips in the past, especially off Australia and New Zealand, but it was obvious right from the start that this was going to be a trip unlike any other that I have been on. All of the other trips allow you to wander freely around on a largish boat in your own clothing, often with small children wandering around and the Australian trips in particular provide you with a cup of tea and a slice of cake, all very civilised. Not this one. First we had to don full waterproof gear as provided by the company, thick padded stuff to keep you warm as well as dry, and over that we had to put on a life jacket. 

Then there was the seating arrangements. There was only space for 12 people to sit and on our trip we only had 10 to allow a bit more space between us, though I really don't think that Covid could have survived this trip! They weren't normal seats, it was more like sitting on a horse with the seat between your legs with a small hand rail on the back of the seat in front for you to hold onto. There would be no wandering around on this boat, no toilets and certainly no tea and cake or small children. This boat was built for speed.

It was a four and a half hour trip covering a large area of the Minch, the sea between mainland Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. Our route took us from Gairloch to the north end of Skye, then up to the Shiant Islands off Lewis and a little further north beyond that, before turning and heading back to Gairloch.  Fortunately I remembered to plot the route on an app on my phone and we covered about 72 miles in total.

Wildlife in the oceans tends to be concentrated around food sources and so large parts of the trip involved moving at high speed, bouncing over waves with spray crashing over the boat as we made our way to and from favoured feeding grounds. On the way back especially we must have endured a full 45 minutes of this, every 30 seconds spray covered the boat, it was like taking a never ending shower with all of your clothes on and it was relentless. Relentless, wonderful and exhilarating, with breathtaking scenery as we made our way past the islands. It was worth the money for the journey back alone, real high octane stuff, the kind of thing that some people pay good money for minus the whales and dolphins!

The whole trip was just a wonderful experience from start to finish. When we arrived back at the harbour I could barely walk when I got off the boat!

Minke whale probably juvenile.

We saw at least two minke whales, an adult and a juvenile. The animal at the top of the post is the adult. Juveniles don't accompany their parents and these two probably aren't related, they've just been brought together by a convenient food supply. We watched them feeding in amongst the gannets for a good 30 minutes, occasionally lunge feeding. The juvenile surfaced right by the boat on one occasion, so close I could hear it's blow. What an experience.

Thurso to Ullapool

Highlight today was this fabulous adult white-tailed eagle which flew over head at Stoer, just north of Lochinver. This is the first sea eagle I have seen on the Scottish mainland, most of the others have been on the Hebrides with a single sighting on Papa Westray, Orkney earlier this year.

It's a beautiful drive from Thurso to Ullapool and includes many of my favourite places such as Strathy Point, Bettyhill, Tongue, Durness and Inverpolly. Today I concentrated mainly on the north coast of Scotland because over the next few days I'll be staying in Inverpolly and will get plenty of time to see that area. 

Strathy point in Sutherland is a headland which can be good for cetaceans but not today for me. 

I was pleased to see these twite at Strathy Point.

Sinclairs Bay

A very enjoyable day today spent at Sinclair's Bay, just north of Wick. I started off at Keiss beach which is just wonderful, with miles of beach which was more or less devoid of people, or at least it was while I was there first thing this morning. A really nice selection of waders on the beach including sanderling, bar-tailed godwit, grey plover, dunlin, ringed plover and most surprising of all, a juvenile ruff.

Small groups of swallows were heading south west for the duration on my visit and in total probably numbered a few hundred, whilst on the sea there were three species of diver, two each of red-throated and black-throated and three great northerns. A pale phase arctic skua harried the terns on the beach.

Later in the day I parked at Ackergill and walked along the coast to Noss Head lighthouse via the ruined Castle Sinclair.

Arctic skua with Noss Head in the background.

Thurso to Duncansby Head

What's not to love about a fulmar chick??? Reminds me a bit of a dodo actually. The St Kildan's used to eat these in their thousands every year and put their oil to use in a variety of ways. Fulmars are such an integral part of any seabird colony these days that it would be easy to assume that they have been around forever, but actually up until 1878 St Kilda was the only known breeding site for fulmars in the UK.

Not much to report today, I spent 90 minutes on a boat sailing around the island of Stroma and then Duncansby Head where the cliffs are now largely devoid of seabirds. Plenty of gannets over the sea and a few great skuas and black guillemots, but not much else. Then it was on to Scrabster where the highlight was a good look at the great yellow bumblebees on the ferry road, before walking a few miles around Holborn Head scanning the sea all of the time. Finally this evening I spent time near Old Wick Castle again scanning over the sea, but not a cetacean to be seen anywhere all day.

Great Yellow Bumblebee, Scrabster

Great yellow bumblebee is the rarest bumblebee found in the UK. It's only found in the Outer Hebrides, Orkney and the extreme north coast of mainland Scotland, especially Caithness which is where I am at the moment. These bees were photographed at Scrabster, near the Orkney ferry terminal.

Bottle-nosed dolphins, Chanonry Point

Chanonry Point on the Black Isle near Inverness is one of the best places in the UK to watch bottle-nosed dolphins from land. Today there was a pod of about 20 dolphins which contained at least three calves.

I've just started a week long tour of northern Scotland hoping to see a few whales and dolphins and this was a great start. I'll be spending a few days in the north east around John O'Groats before heading west along the north coast of Scotland to Durness and then dropping down to Ullapool. It can be all very hit and miss with cetaceans and I might spend the next seven days watching the sea, but I've got three boat trips planned which should give me a better than average chance, plus hopefully I'll see a few decent birds as well. Whatever happens it should be a great experience. Today at Chanonry Point, three summer plumage red-thoated divers flew past, a black guillemot, 20 gannets and a few each of Sandwich and common terns.

Holding back the tide on Formby beach

No sign of the elegant tern today at Formby Point and Sandwich tern numbers were well down on two days ago, down by 50% I would estimate, so perhaps it's gone. However if anything it's an even more impressive spectacle now, with a big build up of common terns to replace the Sandwich terns and large numbers of waders on the shoreline. The most obvious new arrivals are the knot which were present in their thousands today. This is my sixth visit to Formby Point in the past 11 days and remarkably prior today I hadn't seen a single knot during that period. 

Another day at Formby, another look at the Elegant tern

Another wonderful day on Formby beach, after about an hour I managed to locate the elegant tern but didn't see it for long because there was a frustrating amount of disturbance today. Quite a few dog walkers about walking right through the birds, almost encouraging their dogs to chase them, as well as horse riders, walkers and even a guy on a bike who cycled right up to the terns and flushed them and then turned around and went back. It looked a pretty pointless exercise but I'm sure that he had a reason.

Still, a wonderful spectacle, thousands of terns still on the beach and also at least one adult little gull and two wheatears

There they go. Spot the elegant tern. It's in the bottom right of the photo.

Elegant Tern, Formby Beach

Wow what a morning! I just knew that the elegant tern would be at Formby after two consecutive no-shows at Hightown, and Formby was exactly where I wanted to see it most. 

I arrived at 9:30am, about 3 hours before high tide and immediately found a flock of at least 2,500 Sandwich terns on the beach at the end of Lifeboat road. The light was perfect and there was hardly any wind compared with the force 5 we've had for the past few days. I scanned through the flock several times but frustratingly was unable to locate the elegant tern. I could see a dog walker to the north, heading south along the shoreline and it was inevitable that he would eventually flush the birds.

Looking further south I could see another large flock of Sandwich terns about 200m away so I decided the best thing to do was to walk towards them and scan through that flock because when the first flock flushed it would undoubtedly head my way, which is exactly what happened. A combination of the advancing tide and dog walkers pushed many birds my way, some quite close. Still I couldn't find the elegant tern, but it was just an awesome spectacle. By now there must have been 4,000 Sandwich terns at least, and easily 2,000 common terns, whilst behind them on the shoreline there was a flock of around 100 grey plover, most in summer plumage, with many sanderling running along the beach and 50 bar-tailed godwits. Breathtaking!

Tim arrived and went off to read Sandwich tern rings whilst I stayed where I was and kept scanning through my part of the flock. Eventually I saw Tim beckoning me over, clearly he had found the elegant tern. 

Cautiously I headed over, not wanting to flush the flock and he got me onto the bird straight away. The light was perfect and this was about as close as I'd been to any Sandwich terns at Formby this year, and it was a better view of the elegant tern than I'd had at Cemlyn Bay. We watched it for about 20 minutes until finally the advancing tide which was now over our feet, forced us to move back a little and a couple of minutes later the bird flew past us and down the beach and landed about 100m south. I left it there, I was very happy with what I had seen and had no desire to chase the bird around the beach. Finally I'd got the views I wanted and at Formby. A truly breathtaking spectacle.

All of my close ups of this bird are phone scoped with varying degrees of success. I really love this photo, it's by far the best I have achieved of the elegant tern. Even at Cemlyn Bay I couldn't get one this good.

Juvenile Mediterranean Gull, Taylor Park, St. Helens

I reckon Mediterranean gull has a strong case for being the most beautiful British gull in whatever plumage you care to mention, and that includes juvenile plumage. There's a really nice looking individual currently on Taylor Park lake and it's shows really well, down to a few metres.

I've seen quite a few of these on Formby beach over the past week, but none have been anywhere near as obliging as this bird.

The hunt for the Elegant tern - Part 3, return to Hightown

So the elegant tern is now obviously nailed on and all you have to do is turn up at Hightown to see it right? It's not quite that simple.

I arrived today at 10am ahead of the advancing high tide at 10:38 and joined a group of about four birders by the yacht club. Almost immediately somebody shouted out "I've got it!". There was relief in his voice because apparently this was the first time it had been seen since around 6am. For a minute or two I tried to get onto the bird which as usual was in the middle of the Sandwich tern flock, but couldn't and then they all flew briefly before landing again and we had to start the search all over again. I decided to head down the beach to a closer vantage point. 

Down on the beach there was no shelter from the wind and viewing was very difficult. It wasn't just that the scope was shaking, even worse, most of the birds were over 200m away and were facing into the wind and had their backs to us. Probably 30% of the flock also had their heads tucked in asleep.

I met a couple of other birders on the beach and they said that they hadn't seen it. I set my scope up and the first bird I saw was the elegant tern. Unfortunately I just couldn't get the others onto it and after 30 seconds I lost it in the middle of a mass of other terns. Perhaps it had gone to sleep rendering that amazing bill obsolete as an identification aid, I don't know, but it just disappeared. 

I continued down the beach to a concrete jetty and used it as shelter. I'd barely set myself up here when John Tymon arrived from nowhere and stood with me. Now it was John's turn to immediately spot the bird and after getting me onto it, we watched it for a minute before it again disappeared. All too brief but this had been a really nice view of the tern displaying, walking around with wings slightly spread and calling while throwing it's head back. Fifteen hours for me to find it, 15 seconds for John! That's how it goes sometimes. Mind you it helps if you're looking in the right place!

We saw the bird perhaps twice more over the next 30 minutes but each time for only a few seconds before it was either lost in the flock or they all flew around briefly and we had to start again. The shaking tripod was a real problem and in the end we just gave up. It was now about 1pm and the tide was rapidly receding and many birds were just too far away for us to have any real hope of finding the elegant tern. Still, I think we were very lucky. Apart from the bloke who found it when I first arrived and a couple of others with him, none of the other birders I spoke to today managed to see the tern and it wasn't reported again until 8pm. It's still not easy.

The elegant tern was my 276th species in Merseyside (which includes North Wirral) and my 304th species in Lancashire (which obviously doesn't include North Wirral). 

Thanks to John Tymon for the use of the photo above.

Go on then, pick out the elegant tern from that lot in a force 5. 

The hunt for the Elegant tern - Part 2, Hightown

Armed with detailed site information courtesy of Pete, I arrived at Crosby at 7am and headed north towards Hightown. It was a glorious morning and the sea was flat calm like a beautiful blue mirror, and Sandwich terns were flying back and forth all along the coast in good numbers. Hightown is at the southern end of the Sefton dune system which starts at Ainsdale in the north and includes Formby. You can't access Formby beach from Hightown because the River Alt gets in the way, and this allows a decent wader and tern roost to build up undisturbed on the far side of the river at high tide. In effect though, the sand you are viewing on the other side of the river from Hightown is the southern end of Formby beach.

When I arrived I could see that there were thousands of birds present this morning, an estimated 4000 Sandwich terns in fact, as well as good numbers of common and Arctic terns. Gulls included little gull and at least 4 Mediterranean gulls, 2 adults and 2 juveniles. Waders in the roost included at least 100 curlew and a single whimbrel.

Several birders had apparently looked for the Elegant tern from here on Tuesday evening to no avail, so I guess that might have deterred others from turning up this morning but whatever the reason, I was once again alone and it looked as though I'd have to find the bird for myself. My initial scan through the flock wasn't promising. Yes the light was perfect and yes the bird has a stonking great yellowy / orange bill which stood out like a beacon in the Cemlyn colony, but the nearest group of terns to me was at least 150m away and other groups were two or three times that distance, and many birds had their heads tucked in asleep or were facing away from me or were hidden behind other birds. On my own it was always going to be tough and by 8:30am I was beginning to think that it was going to be another frustrating morning. I put out a negative tweet, informing the world that there was no sign of the elegant tern at Hightown. 

Just as I sent the tweet, another birder appeared from nowhere and asked me if I'd seen the bird. He and his mate had been standing on the yacht club lawn and seen me 100m away and he'd decided to walk over and ask. I told him that I hadn't and we had a brief chat before his phone rang; it was his mate telling us that he had found the elegant tern! I was cautiously optimistic at this point, having experienced at least three false alarms over the past few days when people called the bird only for it to be a misidentified common tern. However we legged it back over to him and sure enough this was the real deal and he got us onto it pretty quick. 

Wow, what a bird! No chance that this was a misidentified common tern with a bill like that! The relief was amazing and I did a little dance inside. Unimpressed the bird immediately tucked it's head in and went to sleep. Now it would have been virtually impossible to pick out if you didn't know where it was and after five minutes even we were beginning to question if we were on the right bird. Within a few minutes though, it was awake again and started walking around and even displaying to a Sandwich tern. Fortunately it was in the near group of terns about 120m away so about as good a view as could be expected. 

The hunt for the Elegant tern - Part 1, Chasing the tide on Formby beach

Probably the most predictable 1st for Lancashire ever was found on Formby beach on Sunday evening, an elegant tern with thousands of Sandwich terns. Predictable because it is undoubtedly the same bird as that which spent July in the tern colony at Cemlyn Bay, Anglesey where it was paired with a Sandwich tern. Every year in late summer when the young fledge and the colony disperses, these birds arrive on the Sefton coast, and amazingly just two days after the elegant tern was last seen at Cemlyn it was found at Formby.

News broke on Sunday at about 7pm and I was tempted to go there and then. I got all of my gear ready and even had my shoes on, car keys in hand, but at the last minute abandoned the idea. It would take me 50 minutes to get to the car park and then there was at least a 30 minute walk with no clear idea of exactly where I was walking to. With less than three hours daylight left that didn't seem particularly appealing. I decided to wait until the following day.

I arrived at Formby beach car park (Lifeboat Road) at 6:30am on Monday morning and began the long slog, at first over the dunes and then along the beach. I was expecting a fair few of Lancashire's finest to be there looking for a bird which is not only a county first but also only the 5th for the UK, but no, I saw just four other birders all morning and one of those was Tim, the original finder from the day before. The first birder I met informed me that he had seen the tern at 5:30am but it had flown out to sea, hopefully to fish and not leave for good. I started off down the beach.

From the end of Lifeboat road to the Sandwich tern roost on the beach is at least a mile and a quarter (2km). All the way there the air was full of the cries of Sandwich terns and when I finally got to the roost it contained about 1000 birds, mainly Sandwich but also a lot of common and Arctic terns. There was no sign of the elegant tern and I was told by another birder that tern numbers were well down on the day before. Not what I wanted to hear. I gave it until 11am and then decided to call it a day. It was approaching low tide and the beach was now huge and the heat haze made viewing very difficult. I'd been well entertained by the commoner terns as well as at least 7 little gulls, 3 Mediterranean gulls and a few hundred waders, mainly sanderling, bar-tailed godwit and dunlin, but there was no sign of the star of the show and I was now searching on my own which was just impossible. I trudged back to the car.

At 4pm I was at home when "ping!", my phone caught my attention. Fortunately this wasn't the NHS app telling me to self isolate for 10 days, it was an alert from Birdguides informing me that the tern was back. Tim had found it again in exactly the same spot, in the Sandwich tern roost and apparently it was showing well. I immediately jumped in my car and headed back to Formby.

Another slog ensued over the dunes and down to the roost, and this time there were about 15 other birders present as high tide approached, but again no sign of the elegant tern. Apparently a few minutes after Tim had relocated it, it had flown off out to sea and when I arrived it had not been seen again. I waited and waited until it got to about 8pm at which point for the second time on Monday I decided to call it a day. The bird had shown for about 20 minutes all day. I'd spent 9 hours on site but not seen it.

The evening visit had been worthwhile though, because there was a cracking roseate tern in the roost. It's the bird lurking behind the gull in the photo.

Due to other commitments I couldn't get there for high tide early on Tuesday but in any case it was not reported from Formby early morning. I had decided the night before to get there for around 10am and spend as long as it took. Brave words. I arrived at Formby to be informed by Birdguides that the bird had been seen at nearby Hightown at 9:30am, but was then seen flying towards Formby. I decided to stay at Formby and chance my luck. 

Formby beach on Tuesday was a bit depressing for myself and the one other birder who was there. It was a really tough day, walking up and down the ever expanding shoreline, in the end covering over 6 miles. Of course it's a beautiful location with lots of great birds and it was a tremendous experience, but they were all the same as the day before, nothing really new to report and our hopes receded gradually with the tide. By 2pm the beach looked like a desert with vast open spaces, mirages and a shimmering heat haze with no hope of finding a lone elegant tern. Eventually I gave up and headed home, slightly depressed and resolving to not go again until Thursday. However later in the evening my enthusiasm was renewed and I contacted Pete who had seen the bird at Hightown and got directions from him for where best to view from and decided to get there for 7am on Wednesday. I'll cover that in the next post, but read on for more about Formby beach.