Strumble stuff, three species in one day!

From John o'Sullivan via Pembrokeshire bird blog:
Went over to Strumble Sunday 6-30-8 a.m. a massive feeding flock of Gannets/Manxies/Kittiwakes/Auksacross the horizon along with porpoises and common dolphins...

Today  WinW blogger and Sea Trust volunteer Adrian Rogers and several other regular Strumblers were at the Strumble lookout :

Common Dolphins from Strumble lookout, Photo: Richard Burns.

Hi Cliff ,  

The Cetacean Roll Call at Strumble today for the 2 sessions :
3 or possibly 4 Risso's approx 10.15 moving East to West about tide race distance.
Later on another 2 Risso's moving in same direction approx 17.30 but much further out.
The highlight was 6 Common Dolphin at 16.45 , moving through close in, E to W , picked out by Richard. His photo of 2 attached. Small numbers of Porps showing on both visits.Are these the first pics of Common Dolphins from Strumble ?

Cheers


Adrian Rogers &and ; Richard Burns

Hi Adrian, yep probably the first image taken from the land, a nice record shot leaving no doubt about the species. To the best of my knowledge Common Dolphins were a very rare sight from the coast here until the late 1990's.  GHR, myself and Jim Poole probably had the first record of them back in 1997, although Sarah Earl also recorded them off Ramsay Island from the shore, the same year.They are now recorded regularly every summer now, even entering Fishguard Harbour on several occasions.
 
On Friday we did a crossing to Ireland on the Stena Europe to try out our new mobile recording system. It worked perfectly and although the weather was rougher than we would normally go out in Verena managed to spot us a nice pod of around fifty common dolphins which showed well from the bridge-wings.  

Common Dolphins  from the Stena Europe, photo:CB

National Dolphin Watch- no show- not us!I have been contacted by several people asking us why we were not at Strumble Head on Tuesday for the much publicised Sea Watch Foundation National Dolphin Week watch as advertised on their website. Sea Trust does not take part in this, we are a local based organisation and are out there every week of the year, not just one week or in ths case not at all!
As it happens some of our volunteers were there birdwatching coincidentally and had a great result (see above) At the end of the day its probably best left to the locals! Interestingly their somwhat garbled publicity about Bottlenose Dolphins on the BBC was mixed up with our Common Dolphin superpod footage, a howler  that a lot of people have  commented on ovewr the past couple of days...