Porp's then Bottles, then Porp's then Bottles....

No two days seem to be alike on the Northern Breakwater recently with strong winds and choppy grey seas or calm sparkling azure wavelets but its hardly ever boring! One day bottles the next Porpoises, for cetacean fans its a real treat! As we had Porpoises there yesterday It seemed likely we might have Dolphins today!

I was feeling pretty rough with a lurgy, the harbour entrance was pretty chopped up with a stiff south-westerly  breeze with the autumnal sun playing on the cliffs and boulder strewn shore opposite.
I scanned under some circling gannets and soon found three or four bottles heading out of the Harbour seemingly feeding as they moved .

They were a bit distant but the sight of them perked me up in a way only Dolphins can!

I was just about to go when something made me glance behind me only to see Apache and Ringo coming in from the opposite direction, heading towards me, Their progress was a little erratic or maybe my photographic skills were a bit dulled and I was a bit  too slow to get decent shots.

Either way as I tried to rescue the shots by cropping them I noticed that Apache had more identifying features on her dorsal in the form of three spots in a triangular pattern. Often its easy to mistake such spots for splashes but as they are consistent in all three shots they are obviously marks not splashes!

Apache and Ringo have shown something of an independent streak over the past couple of months
so I was not surprised that they were not with the others, but just as suddenly as they appeared they passed by and disappeared seemingly without a trace!

Not sure whether they joined up with the others or avoided them but either way there they were... gone!