Steady seawatches off the headlands yielded nothing larger than Sooty Shearwaters and nothing smaller than Balearics, of which there have been many. Always important to remember how globally local and endangered this species is - some projections giving just 60 years until extinction due to various pressures on their fragile population.
A couple of visits to Porthgwarra in the darkness of a new moon were enthralling. The first was a little speculative but led to some success trying to photograph the Milky Way which arced across the sky. The maniacal grunts, shrieks and giggles of Manx Shearwater across the moor testing my nerve, alone in the dark on the jagged edge of the world. At times I turned the torch on just for comfort.
The next night there was cloud cover and more folk out in the dark as a Storm Petrel ringing session was in progress. I hadn't been to any stormie ringing since I was a teen on Fair Isle. It was great to see these fantastic little ocean wanderers up close again and, very unusually, a couple of Manxies also found their way into the nets.
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