The Great Gannet Getaway

Yesterday (sat) morning I decided to go to Waxham for dawn to see if I could find any migrants which may have come in on Fridays Easterly. One of the main targets however was to see if any large shearwaters were lingering offshore.... They weren't.

My seawatch started at about 6.30 and ended at 8ish, there was loads out there considering it was a calm sea and an offshore wind, most notably Gannets and winter ducks, these almost certainly were the result of the strong winds. It was interesting that I saw a lot of Gannets, terns, Divers and sea duck but no Shearwaters or Skua's at all.

Results are below

Red Throated Diver- 32 (loads more than I was expecting, all but 3 were pristine summer adults, nice!) 
Wigeon- 300+ many medium sized flocks passing through
Teal 200+ again quite a lot of small flocks, mainly heading North
Common Scoter, one small flock of 12 heading North
Gannet- 350+ (mostly in the first half hr after dawn but a steady stream throughout the day)
Common tern- Many passing through 100+(? not counted fully)
Commic tern- at least 15 probable Arctics but I'm still not confident enough with this species pair in flight, esp at distance!
Sandwich tern- 27
Hobby 1 juv in off and over my head at about 5metres!

After the seawatch I checked the bushes, not much doing here spare a Lesser whitethroat and a few Blackcaps. I heard a call once which I thought could be a Yellow Browed Warbler but the wind and dense veg made it impossible to see or hear again, maybe it was one but I'm sure I'll find one sooner or later this autumn. A trumpet from behind alerted me to a nice flock of 14 Cranes heading South, always a good sight.

 

Another good sight and sound is the first flock of pinks for the autumn, a bit of a rabble of a flock came over from the North, not flying in their usual prestine V.

Just as I gave up on the passerine front and headed back to the car a little pish in Shangri La garden got the attention of a Pied Fly, which was my first of the year believe it or not.

 

I looked at the pager as I got in the car and decided to give the 'showing well' Wryneck a go at Winterton seeing as it was on the way home. I met up with Winterton's Ted and we had a search of the area in question but to no avail, the Wryneck had eluded us.
Other birds at Winterton included 2 Hobby's, 2 Buzzards and a few hirrundines moving through, apart from that it was fairly quiet, no dragons or damsels worthy of mention at the pools either.

A nice morning out even if it was slightly less eventful than hoped.

 Obviously watched the rugby this morning so no birding so far today. May go to Strumpy later to try and photograph the Willow Emeralds, conditions look good for them today...at least at the moment anyway.