Monday 22nd July

It was a bit of a drab day today and it got much drabber still this afternoon. The wildlife sightings were great though. On the morning three hour trip, we first watched seven seals round the island as they hauled out on the rocks. Two of the females were in a very moany  mood – lots of noise and flipper slapping going on. South of the island we saw a small but intense feeding event going on involving gannets, gulls and a good sized group of common dolphins.We watched them feeding intensively before they came over to inspect us. We then went westwards but all was quieter until we came back east and found a large group of harbour porpoises feeding under gannets. They were extremely quick and hard to photograph.

The afternoon was rather a soggy affair, but there was still lots of wildlife to see including more seals and common dolphins. As often happens when the visibility drops in the summer, all manner of seabirds were close to the coast where they could see their way around – gannets, thousands of Manx shearwaters, some Cory’s shearwaters, and also an arctic and pomarine skua.