In the previous Blog Post, I covered the seawatching from the Scillonian on the crossing from Penzance to St Mary's on the Red-footed Booby twitch. It had been a successful crossing with good numbers of Cory's Shearwaters and a few Great Shearwaters. I was really hoping for a Pterodroma Petrel or a Scopoli's Shearwater, but I hadn't been that lucky. Still on a positive, the Birders at the back of the Scillonian hadn't found any either.
We arrived at St Mary's on time & 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. It seemed to take a long time to finally get going, but finally we were off. We were briefly joined by two Bottlenose Dolphins after we had left St Agnes, but sadly they didn't stick around for photos.
Twenty-five minutes after leaving the harbour, we were approached the Bishop Rock Lighthouse. The boat's ticket collector said he thought he could see a Bird sitting on the top of the lighthouse platform. I was struggling with the bins in the choppy seas & switched to the camera. A quick look at the back of the camera & I was able to shout "It's on the right by the antenna".
After the best part of an hour around the Bishop Rock Lighthouse, we agreed we had had our fill of the Red-footed Booby. The boatman took a circuitous route back which allowed us to see a handful of Cory's Shearwaters. I checked all the ones I saw & none were Scopoli's Shearwater candidates.
We arrived back into Hugh Town, with barely enough time to have a look at one of the local Birding spots like Lower Moors. So I settled on a celebratory lunch & a coffee in one of the cafes, before heading back to get on the Scillonian.
We left a few minutes early and took the route through the islands. We saw the first Cory's Shearwaters while we were still off the Northern end of St Mary's. In total, I saw forty-two Cory's Shearwaters on the crossing back: all around the Scilly Isles. At the time, all the ones I checked with the bins or the camera looked to be Cory's Shearwaters.
However, while I was sorting the photos, this Large Shearwater caught my eye as a potential Scopoli's Shearwater candidate. It was in the background to a closer bog-standard Cory's in these five photos. It was taken as we were heading back to Penzance. The timestamp is 15:41 GMT & we were about fifteen minutes out of the harbour, as we left a few minutes earlier than scheduled. We were off the Northern end of St Mary's, when he encountered a party of Cory's Shearwaters, which included this individual. I would welcome any thoughts on what species it was.
I've just had this feedback from the legandary Bob Flood after I forwarded these photos to him "This is an interesting bird with much white the under primaries, but crucially not p10. So, I am afraid that it doesn't meet current ID criteria". So, it isn't a Scopoli's Shearwater. Clearly I need to keep looking.
More straight-forward to identify were three Sooty Shearwaters.
As we left the Scilly Isles, I saw four Risso's Dolphins, made up of a couple of individuals, followed by two single individuals. I also saw another ten Short-beaked Common Dolphin, mainly ones or twos. All the sightings were long enough to identify with the bins, but too short to stand a view to a chance at some reasonable photos.
As we reached the Cornish coast we started seeing Manx Shearwaters again, hugging the coast and heading for Land's End. It was impossible to count them & still scan for other species, Cetaceans & Seals. I estimated I saw over two thousand, but a focused count would have probably revealed this was a significant undercount.
It had been a long, but very enjoyable day, which started when the alarm rang at 02:00. We docked around 19:00, but there was a delay before we could finally get ashore. After a refuelling stop, I headed off to a chippy by the Hayle. I finally got home about 23:30.