Seaford seawatch (30 April 2017)

Sunday 30 April. I seawatched from Seaford from 05:15 to 17:00 when I left with Matt. Thanks to his and other's sharp eyes and some good calls from Derek in the second row and Simon on the beach I saw the following flying east: 4 Red and 2 Black-throated Divers, 3 Manx and a Balearic Shearwater, 297 Gannets, 2 Bar-headed and 22 Brent Geese, 30 Shelduck, 8 Gadwall, a Teal, 4 Pintail, a pair of Shoveler, a female Eider, 941 Common and 25 Velvet Scoter, 102 Grey Plover, 213 Knot, 110 Sanderling, 27 Dunlin, 82 Bar-tailed Godwits, 99 Whimbrel, a Redshank, 9 Turnstone, 47 Pomarine, 44 Arctic and 10 Great Skuas, 3 Mediterranean, 32 Little and 77 Black-headed Gulls, 168 Sandwich, 364 Commic and 59 Little Terns and 24 auks. Two Hobbies and 2 Swallows came in and a Common Sandpiper was on the breakwater. The Balearic was picked up at about 13:05 by Matt. It was with a Manx (a nice comparison) then landed on the sea. All but two of the Pomarines were pale morph birds as were 21 of the Arctics. Of the Commic Terns 212 were identified as Common and 37 Arctic. A very enjoyable seawatch with lots of variety even if it did tail off a bit - the last Pom was at about 13:05, the last 4 hours failing to produce the extra three we needed to reach 50.

poor images of one of the Pomarine Skuas. It was a lot closer than these images suggest

Sandwich Terns going nowhere fast