No shearwaters! Why bother seawatching?

It’s that time of year when many a birder heads off to their local headland or further afield to Cornwall or Ireland to take advantage of some superb seawatching, particularly shearwater passage. It even slightly amuses me when I read on twitter or on various blogs about a poor day seawatching at Pendeen as they only saw one Great Shearwater and a handful of Cory’s! Now, I used to live near Pendeen and know where they are coming from but perhaps a little bit of perspective is needed. I spent 8 ½ hours on Sunday seawatching in Hemsby and had an excellent day yet there wasn’t a shearwater of any shape or size in sight!

So why do I bother with it? In the last 2 years I have clocked up over 250 hours of proper seawatching, not including the occasional glances out I may have from my house, and recorded over 58,000 birds onto BirdTrack. In that time I have recorded 15 shearwaters and two petrels. Sooty Shearwaters are the most common shearwater I have had off Hemsby with a mighty total of 8 birds, although Manx Shearwater aren’t too far behind on 7. That equates to 0.03 birds per hour! Leach’s Petrel is the only petrel that I’ve seen off Hemsby and only one, the other petrel was too distant to ID although I had it as a probable Leachs. So 2 years, or 250 hours of seawatching is worse than ½ hour on a crap day at Pendeen.

Perhaps it’s the skuas, gulls and terns that keep me sane during the seawatches. Well, a quick glance does show that I have seen four species of skua, Arctic by far the most common with 156 followed by 33 Bonxies. My BirdTrack data shows that I have seen 11 Pomarine Skuas although I think that this is skewed slightly by one or two individuals hanging around the area for a few days and I would think that the actual figure is nearer 7 birds. Finally, and probably the rarest seabird I have seen so far are the two Long-tailed Skuas, an adult and a juvenile in 2013. Again, these are very low numbers, 0.03 and 0.007 birds per hour respectively for Poms and Long-tails.  I’m guessing, as I don’t have exact numbers, that the figures for skuas and shearwaters are a lot lower than other areas further north in Norfolk and I wonder if this is to do with the close proximity of the Scroby Sands Offshore Wind Farm and sand bank pushing birds further out to sea by the time they arrive at Hemsby?

Gulls are an ever present sight on a seawatch and I have had the fortune to add a few scarce species such as Glaucous Gull (2) and Yellow-legged Gull as well as some good movements of Little Gulls at times including 257 passing south on 19^th January this year. However, in general it has been poor for gulls and I have yet to find the much anticipated Sabine’s Gull off Hemsby yet.

Thousands of terns pass by Hemsby throughtout the summer, whether it be foraging Little Terns in June and early July or large numbers of Common Terns and smaller numbers of Sandwich Terns moving south in late July and August. Over the 2 years I have recorded over 11,000 ‘comic’ terns moving south, the majority identified as Common Terns and only 23 Arctic Terns. Taking into account the number that I recorded as ‘comic’ terns the number of Arctic Terns still amounts to only 0.3% of the total of identified Common/Arctics! Seven Black Terns and a solitary Roseate Tern add a bit of uncommon/scarce feel to the tern records. So, all in all skuas, gulls and terns have mustered less than 20 ‘interesting’ records between them.

Auks are surprisingly thin on the ground here, a total of 534 recorded since August 2012 and the vast majority Guillemots with only 31 Razorbills, 3 Little Auks and 3 Puffins to show for my efforts. Divers and grebes show a similar trend although slightly more are recorded with over 8500 birds recorded of which 98.8% are Red-throated Divers. This winter there was a few days of amazing passage with 1481 past north in 1 ½ hours on 17^th March and 1249 past north in an hour on 18^th March. Great Crested Grebes are a regular sight in small numbers in winter with a few passing Hemsby most weeks. Great Northen Divers are pretty thin on the ground with only 7 recorded but nowhere near as hard to see as Black-throated Diver, my solitary record falling on the 1^st January this year. I have managed to see two other species of grebe, Slavonian (2) and Red-necked (1) but again neither are an annual occurrence.

There are a few other seabirds that I haven’t mentioned that are commonly seen such as Gannet (the most common bird recorded with 9312), Fulmar (surprisingly low numbers, 90 birds) and Cormorants (8167 birds). Shags are not the easiest bird to see off east Norfolk I believe so I am relatively happy with picking out 16 so far.

After all this pointless waffling I have finally made it onto the main reason why I seawatch so much on patch. Of course I wish I could see more shearwaters etc but to protect what is left of my sanity I try to look at it practically. Setting the scene, my patch has no freshwater and no wader habitat so I have to rely almost entirely on my seawatching to see waders and wildfowl. I have recorded 22 species of wader and 20 species of wildfowl while seawatching and that equates to just under a quarter of my overall patch list! Although I haven’t seen any rare species of wader or wildfowl I have to admit a certain amount of joy at watching my first Grey Phalarope fly past, my one and only Avocet to date move south or the flock of 5 Scaup heading north. Obviously seaduck are relatively common, with Common Scoter, Eider and Shelduck a regular sight while small numbers of Red-breasted Merganser, Goldeneye and Velevet Scoter are normally recorded in winter. Long-tailed Duck and Goosander still have to make it onto my patch list, hopefully this winter. 

Dabbling ducks move past in varying numbers from the abundant Wigeon and Teal, to the regular but in small numbers, Mallard, Pintail and Shoveler to the genuine patch gold in the shape of Tufted Duck (5 birds) and Gadwall (2). I am quite possibly the only PWC contestant to air grab a Gadwall!

Other than Brent Geese, geese are thin on the ground although two patch ticks in the shape of a lone Egyptian Goose and two small flocks of Barnacle Geese add a slightly plastic feel to my seawatching....

The graph below shows the breakdown of waders recorded on a seawatch, no real surprises although the Black-tailed Godwit numbers are slightly skewed by one flock of 130 fying directly west straight over my head. Other than this record they are actually a very hard bird to get on patch.

I have now recorded 91 species on patch through seawatching and yes, I haven’t seen a large shearwater, many petrels, an albatross, a Feas type etc but on a patch level it’s been pretty good fun.  I can only dream of a day like the ones of Pendeen or Porthgwarra, heck I can only dream of some of the days that are had 25 miles away off Sheringham as well!!