What a first day back though. Arriving there at 09.30 with calm seas and the warmth of the sun just getting started it was a very pleasant morning indeed. The visibility was good and the tide race had yet to get going. I soon spotted a couple of porpoise well out to the NE with gulls pointing them out but they soon moved on and all was quiet. There were very many birds feeding off the Strumble bank and while watching them I spotted a further three porpoise moving east to west and they too soon went out of sight. Lloyd arrived with the Saturday crew and we all settled in for a sunny weather survey. While scanning around I spotted a group of commons off to the NW and scanning some more there was another group following behind making 20-25 all together. We watched as they moved to the NE eventually going out of sight. Some thirty minutes later a second group of around 15-20 commons came up from the west and like the previous group were very active and breaching well.
Again all went quiet giving us time to reflect on the survey to that point. Certainly in my five to six years of surveying I have never seen such large groups of Commons this time of year. I've had the odd one or perhaps a pair passing through toward the end of February but as far as I can recall not in January.
Could I dare hope for Rissos? That would be asking a lot I thought and would be the first time we've had three different cetaceans in the same session in winter. I did hope and I did get!! One of our new volunteers Lilah spotted several Rissos moving along outside the tide race. There were five or six and on processing the images there's at least two I've seen off Strumble before. Very distantly and spotted just before we were packing up I spotted the commons again and it looked as if the two groups had joined up into a now much larger pod and were moving back out of Cardigan bay and heading to the WNW. So all in all a marvellous first of the year session and fingers crossed tomorrow will be as good.
