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.