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Sunday 30 March 2014

Bottle-nosed Dolphin in St Mary's Harbour

This Bottle-nosed Dolphin was showing so well just off the quay in St Mary's Harbour

  I had a call from Joe Pender yesterday afternoon to tell me that there was a Bottle-nosed Dolphin in the harbour. I've never seen one before and a quick look out of the window, that looks over the harbour, and Elle and I observed it swimming very close to the quay. I rushed down and it put on a good show as it swam by. Then Ossy gave a shout 'Ere!' With others I climbed aboard The Merideran boat and from the top deck we all got cracking views as it followed the boat around the quay.
 
  A visit to Porth Hellick this morning produced up 10 Willow Warbler, 9 Chiffchaff, 2 White Wagtail and 2 Sand Martin.
  At 12.00, with Robin, Lucy, 925, Big Al and a few non-birders, I went over to St Agnes to go and hopefully see Graham's Hoopoe that he found last week. Graham came to greet us and for the next 30 minutes he was leading Hoopoe tours and he had the bird pinned down in a field below the Parsonage where we all observed it for a good ten minutes before it flew off. I stuffed my face and had a large brew at Graham's before making my ways over to the beach below the campsite to see the male Redstart that was seen yesterday and found it feeding with a female Black Redstart, 4 male Wheatear and lots of phyllocs. A female Merlin flew by and on the Big Pool there was a single Canada Goose. (A very rare sight here). 925 also saw a Tree Pipit and on Bryher Higgo got two of the latter species. These being the first of the year.


This Continental Song Thrush was a nice surprise


Before the thrush, this Continental Robin was trapped and showed no fat reserves
 
Elle ringing her first Willow Warbler
 
 
Up to 16 Willow Warbler and 15+Chiffchaff were on St Agnes. While on Bryher Higgoi also got 15+willow Warbler.
 
Robin Mawer


The Hoopoe showed well but was always distant

A very smart looking male Redstart. Note all the flies buzzing around that it was feeding on

 
Up to 4 male Wheatear were on the beach with a single Black Redstart
  
The Hoopoe tour leader
 
Returning to St Mary's and the Bottle-nosed Dolphin put another good show

1 comment:

  1. Hi Spider, glad to see you managed to connect with the Bottlenose. That individual is actually a well tracked mammal as it's been observed for much of the winter in Falmouth Bay. You might be interested to hear it's a lone French male which has spent pretty much all of its known life alone but is remarkably tame spending January in Falmouth Bay before moving on to Newlyn Harbour on the 16th March before ending up on Scillies. The obvious notch in the top of the dorsal fin and the second smaller cut in the trailing edge have helped with it's ID. Here's a video of it in Newlyn before it arrived at St Mary's (stop at 0:53 for a view of the dorsal fin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrQwZBKBXCk#t=53

    Cheers,
    Samuel

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