The Standlake Birder

   European Storm Petrel All photos in this blog are curtesy of my good birding pal Nick. To put it mildly, my sea bird list is rubbish! So when I heard my good friends Nick and Anne were planning to do an all-day Pelagic from Falmouth I asked if I could join them. The trip was run by AK Wildlife cruises with whom Nick and Anne had had a very good day with last September. With a 10:30 boat departure we had arranged to stay the previous night in the Heston Premier Inn some 25 minutes’ drive from Falmouth. I had a family event to attend at lunch time and so departed for Cornwall around 14:00. As the drive progressed the weather got worse and worse, very stormy with torrential rain and very little visibility which did not bode well for a trip in a small boat far out to sea!   We met in the pub adjacent to the Premier Inn for dinner, a 5 out of 10 meal which seems to be the standard these days for pub food and sorted out logistics for the next day. Overnight the stormy weather showed no s

    Forster's Tern OK that’s pretty cringe worthy I would have to agree!   My alternative was “Passage to Arne” but I thought that it was too obscure.   So the resentment bit dates back to Thursday 6 th  April, the day before the long easter weekend. We had family around when news broke of a mega rare Forster’s Tern on a reservoir in Somerset. To say that the suggestion that I go and see it was unpopular would be an understatement but after sulking around for a bit I was told ”oh just go!!!”   It was the best part of a 2 hour drive from home and when I arrived there was a small huddle of birders looking out over the reservoir. I was told that it had flown off literately just before I arrived and although I stayed until near dark it did not return. A good candidate for dip of the year!   More recently what is presumably the same bird has been reported on and off along the Dorset coast. Its appearances were short, infrequent, and unreliable, hence my motivation to try for it was low.