birdwatching

It was so choppy this morning after the overnight wind that we sadly had to cancel the morning trip. However it did calm down enough and the wind switched through the morning for us to run the afternoon Ocean Discovery, and we had a really good trip. We found grey seals at the island and…

More delightful summer weather today, with mizzle and murk and by the afternoon a  fairly brisk westerly wind. The wildlife made up for it. This morning we had a four hour trip, and we had great views of common dolphins and a really good variety of seabirds, including storm petrels, sandwich terns, Manx, spooty and…

We had excellent views today of a minke whale feeding in the bay with common dolphins all day. The minke’s blow was very visible from a fair distance away which caused some initial discussion about the species ID but it was a minke. The bay was full of dolphins in small groups here there and…

After the extremely strong wind of yesterday the weather and sea had calmed down an amazing extent. We had two three hour trips, and had great views of common dolphins on both of them. This morning we found two small groups, and this afternoon quite a few more. There was a large group of seals…

We had a very busy day today with three trips in strong northerly wind. This pushed a lot of those pelagic seabirds which have been feeding in the bay lately further offshore, where we couldn’t go! There were still thousands of Manx shearwaters inshore though, and also some storm petrels and fulmars. We saw common…

August’s weather started as most of July has gone, with wind, rain and a bit of a sea running. However the wildlife sightings continued to be brilliant. It does seem to be the case that when we get loads of low pressure systems queuing up, it sends it some amazing wildlife. This morning for example,…

More “not ideal” weather today, however if we cancelled every time it rained we would never go, at the moment. This morning we saw lots of Risso’s dolphins, rather unexpectedly, including calves. We also saw harbour porpoises and common dolphins and this time some quite small tuna. That crazy feeding had moved offshore, and sea…

We had two 3 hour Ocean Discovery trips today with lots of excited families and their kids on. With justification – once again we found multiple pods of common dolphins everywhere we sailed. It was quite a windy day (what else?) and we had lots of people keen to sit on the net so there…

Yet another four hour trip was reduced to three hours this morning, due to fog this time. That cleared by 10am and we were able to head out. There was plenty of wildlife to see – common dolphins (the Risso’s appear to have moved away now), grey seals, a bluefin tuna leaping right next to…

It was a long day today with a four hour followed by a three hour trip. This morning we had some good sailing conditions and we were able to get a long way offshore. However we didn’t need to before we found both common and Risso’s dolphins inshore. The common dolphins bowrode with us for…