May the 'fourth' be With You?

Today something happened.  Something I didn't know to be possible.  Something I thought only to be true in dreams, crazy dreams.  Seawatching... without a ridiculously early start.  Not even relatively early, I didn't leave until after midday.  I know this may be hard to believe, but I assure you it's true!
 After midday you see, was when the south-easterlies were supposed to kick in.  An supposedly that's what's needed for a good seawatch.
 I got to Splash Point for 13:00, and immediately had three Little Terns pointed out!  Of course, by Little Terns I do mean black blobs with pointy wings - it may be a different time of day but this is still seawatching after all. Still, things were looking promising, fingers were crossed for a good movement of Pomarine's!
 A handful of Sandwich Tern, a 1cy Med Gull and some Common Scoter soon followed, but no Poms, and things soon slowed down to barely a steady passage of birds past.  Hmm, surely when the wind really started so would the bird movement.  Logic right?  And so, the wind picked up, but the passage didn't.  After four hours all that was seen of note was a moderately close Arctic Skua, a couple of specks that were Bonxie's and a few Red-throated Diver. A Porpoise too, but I don't think that had anything to do with the wind movements...
 At 17:00 I had to call it and head home.  Where were the Poms? I don't know. Five passed Dungeness, but apparently avoided Splash.  So although it was enjoyable -especially not having to put on an alarm for 4:50am- it was a pretty quiet seawatch.  Today, the force was not with me.

A Little Ob-Skua

It would appear I've become slightly hooked with seawatching.  This morning I was back down at Splash Point for, by far my best session yet.  Fantastic would indeed be a good way to describe it.

 By 7am we'd already had Whimbrel, Razorbill, Guillemot, Common Scoter and a few Swallows, already a decent start, but not really what you would class as fantastic. An Arctic Skua changed that. Although to call it distant would be an understatement.  It wasn't more than ten minutes before we then had a Black-throated Diver pass by.  Two lifers by 8am, not bad.

 A few Red-throated Divers, Med Gull, more Whimbrel, Scoter and Swallows came next.  Then came a Bonxie.  Or as I suppose I should say, a Great Skua.  What an impressive black dot.

 These were all well and -very- good, but nothing really stunned me quite as much as the Short-Eared Owl coming in off the sea.  Really a beautiful bird, and it certainly caught me by surprise.  

 Another Bonxie and Arctic Skua went by, but after that it did start to quiet down.  A close in Common Tern, more Med Gull, Red-Breasted Merganser and then we had reached the point when the sea went quiet.  Just as I was leaving though there came another surprise.  Rather an immense surprise.  I only caught a few second view... but Shorelark!  I was slightly bemused when it was called.  Thankfully, it was pointed out to me just before it was out of sight of my eyes -which isn't that far away.  There was no time to sort out optics.

 There, I think that lives up to Fantastic... don't you?