Spectacular Seawatch at Reculver!

With a strong NW wind forecast for Saturday blowing up to 50mph with rain showers, this looked to perfect conditions for a seawatch off Reculver Towers. Its been a couple of years since the last really good seawatch and often the right conditions still don't deliver the goods but this turned out to be a memorable seawatch for both quality and quantity of birds. I arrived around 8am where a few birders were present and after getting tucked in, I settled in for nearly 5 hours of seawatching. At first the wind was NNW and only a few birds were moving but mid morning the wind really got up and started to swing around to the NW which produced some excellent movement of birds. Noted between 8am - 12.30pm were 1 Velvet Scoter, c20 Common Scoter, 1 Pochard, c70 Dark bellied Brent Geese, 2 Red breasted Merganser, 15 Shelduck, c50 Dunlin, 4 Grey Plover, c20 Guillemot, 2 Goldeneye and 2 Redshank. Whilst I have seen many Gannets at Reculver over the years, there was a movement of c1300 Gannet moving west in a continuous stream of birds with a few birds coming in quite close where I attempted some photography which was challenging in the gale force wind. In all fairness, there could have easily been 2000 birds going through. It was certainly a spectacle I have never seen before at Reculver. Also seen were c500 Kittiwake moving west in flocks close to the shore, 2 Little Auk zipped through and I just managed to get the camera onto one of them to record a shot. There were c40 Wigeon, 6 Snipe, 15 Teal, c30 Teal, 10 Turnstone, 2 Goosander, 20 Great Skua, 1 Arctic Skua, 1 Pomarine Skua and 10 Little Gull concluded a superb memorable session. All those hours in the past of staring out to see not seeing much are soon rewarded with a session like this. 

Gannets

Great Skua

Kittiwakes 

Little Auk