Bleary eyed after the Sundays adventures our sleep was rudely interrupted at 5 am by the Herring Gulls calling outside our bedroom windows. With the days pelagic being an evening one we had the day to fill so after alate breakfast we spent a few hours drinking copious mugs of tea and processing some of the hundreds of photos we'd all taken.
That suddenly changed when news flashed up on the Scully's birds WhatsApp group that Ash Fisher had found a summer plumaged Spotted Sandpiper at Port Hellick Pool! A lifer for Al and I'd only ever see na couple of full summer plumaged birds in the UK before with the rest being winter plumaged or juvenile birds. The last summer plumaged bird I'd seen was also a Cheshire tick - a bird seen on the 13th June 2004 at Sandbach Flashes.
Luckily we bumped into Higgo as we were leaving our accommodation and he kindly gave us a lift in his van to and from the site. We were among the first to arrive so had the small hide to ourselves for awhile. The bird was showing ridiculously well down to a few metres as it patrolled up and down its chosen area of exposed mud. Its feeding technique was reminiscent of a small heron as it extended its next and intently stalked its prey before stabbing forward with its bill.
Pressed for time we left the site and got back to our accomodation just in time to grab our bags and head down to the quay. Unfortunately, after 4 days of good weather, the rain forecast materialised and it was a very wet and lumpy trip. None of us suffered with sea sickness but several people on board did.Despite the conditions we saw several more Wilsons petrels but none of us took their cameras out the water proof bags! With thunder and lightning and fading light Joe took the decision to head back to St Mary's earlier than planned and a very wet team disembarked and headed to the Atlantic to dry out and have a couple of celebratory beers.
Next morning we had our customary avian 5 am alarm call before having a leisurely morning before heading to the airport to catch our flight back to lands End airport and the long drive home. A great trip with great mates and loads of good birds!
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