Strumble Diary, May 18th.

11.00-13.00 SW 3/4 but surprisingly sunny as all the way from Mathry to the Ocean Lab in Goodwick and then from O lab to within half a mile of Strumble we had steady drizzle. I joined Fran and Lucy for the Monday Sea Trust Porpoise Photo ID survey this morning. As we arrived at 11am a vertual swarm of around 100 House Martins flew past the lookout, heading west. Presumably migrants brought down by the nearby rain? Others passed in dribs and drabs with a few swallows throughout the watch. five or six swifts also passed by in the same direction and then a few more swallows that flew straight out northwards. From the start we had 60+ common Dolphins with a similar number of attendent feeding Gannets which eventually moved off to the west with the tide. Cetacean-wise it was pretty quiet for the second part of the watch with only a couple of porpoises sighted despite optimum tide conditions (HT 10am) Interestingly, given the massive loss of Gannets on Grassholm i looked for sub-adults, but could ony find three second summer birds. As we made our way back up to the car park at the end of the watch, at least eight Chough were feeding in the field behind the car park, some of which had yellow bills, marking them as juveniles. I did not see the bill colour of all of them, perhaps some crecheing going on?