I've been birding 50 years and never been to the Isles of Scilly. I was finally lured there today not just by a red-footed booby which has been hanging around Bishop Rock lighthouse, but also the possibility of several other seabirds which I have never seen before in the UK. It was going to be a fleeting visit though, leave Penzance on the Scillonian at 9:15, arrive St. Mary's at 12 noon, leave St Mary's at 12:15 on a charter boat, arrive Bishop Rock lighthouse 13:00, make sure that we're back on St Mary's in order to catch the Scillonian back to Penzance at 16:15, arriving back on the mainland at 19:00. A day like that was always going to be about the seabirds.
The first part of the journey went well, shortly after we got out of Penzance harbour we started seeing shearwaters and pretty soon there were obviously large numbers in the distance. Most of them looked big and sure enough it didn't take long for us to positively identify our first Cory's.
Great shearwaters were a little more difficult, they rarely seemed to come very close to the boat and when they did they always seemed to go around the front of the boat and were not seen for long, unlike the Cory's which often glided alongside us.
We reckoned that we saw at least 500 Cory's and 15 great shearwaters but there were vast numbers in the distance that were unidentifiable from a rocking boat with just binoculars, and they were often against the light. To give an idea of the likely true number of birds, yesterday from the Lizard there were 20,000 large shearwaters counted, and several locations in Cornwall have had counts of 3 - 5000 each of Cory's and great. Both species were UK ticks for me, though I have seen Cory's before from Madeira, as well as it's close congener Scopoli's shearwater in the Mediterranean.
As we scanned through the flocks I spotted a couple of bluefin tuna and we saw about eight common dolphins quite close to the boat.
Other shearwaters seen today but not photographed, at least two Balearic, three sooty and around 500 Manx.
Cory's shearwaters.
Eventually we arrived at Bishop Rock lighthouse to find no birds sat on it, and certainly no booby. It was disappointing, especially since the bird reappeared later in the day at about 17:00, but by that time we were on the Scillonian heading back to Penzance. Still, it was a fabulous experience and one which I certainly didn't regret doing.
It's hard to be disappointed when you've had such fabulous views of Cory's and great shearwaters, and not just singularly but in large numbers. An awesome spectacle.
Just off Bishop Rock we came across a raft of Cory's shearwaters which showed well.
There were lots of gannets in all kinds of weird plumages to negotiate!
I can't say that I was overly impressed with the small part of Scillies that I saw, certainly nothing here to entice me back. Still, you never know....
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