With a fresh SSW wind blowing most of the days interest was offshore A 12-hour seawatch produced our second-best ever day total of 106 Balearic Shearwaters passing west along with other highlights including three Manx Shearwaters, a Little Stint and a juvenile Long-tailed Skua while back up was provided by 430 Gannets, 24 Ringed Plovers, five Bar-tailed Godwits, seven Knot, 23 Sanderling, 50 Dunlin, eight Mediterranean Gulls, 1157 Sandwich Terns, three Black Terns, a Great Skua and 35 Arctic Skuas. Large numbers of gulls were also feeding along the tideline and included four Caspian Gulls, two Yellow-legged Gulls, a presumed hybrid Caspian Gull x Herring Gull and a German-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull. Land bird interest was limited to a steady passage of Sand Martins and Swallows heading out to sea.
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Caspian Gull Larus cachinnans juvenile Dungeness 7th September 2022 |
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Caspian Gull Larus cachinnans second-summer Dungeness 7th September 2022 |
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Presumed Caspian x Herring Gull hybrid first-winter Dungeness 7th September 2022 |
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Lesser Black-backed Gull Larus fuscus second-summer colour-ringedH049T Dungeness 7th September 2022 |
Fourteen Porpoises and three Grey Seals were feeding offshore.