Friday 4 September 2009

Rough Stuff

A couple of days using time available due to the rough weather which ultimately caused the partial cancellation of our Dolphin-othon, was spent getting back to my birding roots which was a holiday of a kind.

And yet in conditions beyond any I would deem reasonable for a survey, I (we) saw loads of Porpoises. My abiding impression was of the early morning today when in a chaotic wind against tide troubled sea, three porpoises breached together, (less a breach than the sea leaving them!) stranding them momentarily stuck in mid air as the wave suddenly subsided.

Generally I do my cetacean surveys with binoculars which give a reasonable overall view but miss out on the finer points of observation. Had we been passing by on Stena Europe ferry, very little of what I saw with a telescope from the shore at Strumble would have been visible from the ship.

This is not to say our surveys aboard the Stena Europe are flawed, we never expected to see everything but we get a basic impression based on a long term consistant and balanced methodology

However more intimate casual observations may give additional and valuable insights that put everyting else into perspective which must prove useful in the long term and help to build the greater picture.

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