On 7 Aug 23, Bob Flood & team found the UK's second record of Red-footed Booby on one of their Scillies pelagics. I assumed it wasn't going to be twitchable. However, a week later, Bob decided to have a quick look at the Bishop Rock Lighthouse at the end of that day's pelagic. He made a sarcastic prediction that nobody on the boat believed, that the Red-footed Booby would be sitting on the top of the lighthouse. The photo of a happy boatload when they found it was there, quickly went viral on the Birding networks that evening.
I decided to see if it was seen the next day and I was also was struggling to see how to get out to the Bishop Rock Lighthouse, having completely forgotten that the regular inter-island boats used to take punters out to the lighthouse back in the 80s. It was still there the following day, when the first wave of twitchers saw it. I couldn't go on the next day, as that was my regular volunteering day on Brownsea. But I managed to book a space for a day trip on the Scillonian for the 17th.
I really didn't appreciate the 02:00 alarm call. But it was time for my first breakfast, followed by a nice uneventful drive down to Penzance. I found a parking space next to the harbour for the second breakfast, before joining the early birds at the start of the ferry queue. I was keeping any eye on the back of the queue to see if we had enough Birders to be able to charter an inter-island boat. Surprisingly, there were only about a dozen Birders in the queue. Well that should be enough, albeit it might cost us a bit more money for the inter-island boat.
The Scillonian crew were quick to get us onto the Scillonian & we were away on schedule. Time to start looking for Seabirds & Cetaceans. I had found a place next to where we would unload off the Scillonian on the starboard side, while the other Birders were scattered around the rear deck. I was taking a risk by standing away from the other Birders, but I was also in a good spot for the light and also out of the wind. The crossing started off quickly with a pod of three Bottlenose Dolphins as we passed Mousehole.
We were soon clearing Porthgwarra, the last point on the Cornish coast on the Scillonian's route. Fortunately, it was a nice sunny & relatively calm day. Soon afterward, I saw the first of fourteen Short-beaked Common Dolphins on the crossing. They quickly became a favourite for some of the passengers standing near me. They got into Dolphin spotting & one of the passengers picked up a couple of really close individuals that I would have otherwise missed, while I was scanning further out. Unfortunately, I failed to get photos of any of the Dolphins on either crossing with none giving prolonged views.
But the priority for the crossing was to look for and photograph as many Cory's Shearwaters as possible. 2023 has been one of the best years for Cory's Shearwaters in Cornish & Scillies waters with thousands being present. More interesting there have been a few Scopoli's Shearwaters in with them. This is the relatively recently split of the Mediterranean subspecies of Cory's Shearwater: which Clements still hasn't bothered to split yet. But as the British List is based upon IOC taxonomy, this would be a British Tick for most UK Birders.
We were quick to join a handful of Birders who were already on the inter-island boat that would take us to the Bishop Rock Lighthouse. I will cover that in the next Blog Post.