Cornwall Day Trip

Pacific Diver - Mount's Bay, Penzance

As everyone worth their salt had been down to see the adult Pacific Diver over the past 5 years there was nobody interested in coming on a Monday and I thought Little Mick had seen it already so missed out on being able to give him a lift.

Anyway I left the crib at about 3am and arrived at Marazion just after 8.30am to find a single birder looking at sod all! Eventually I managed to pick up the bird quite a long way out and it gradually drifted closer with 4 Great Northern Divers before starting to feeding a drifting out until lost to view. A decent looking bird which I was surprised about...even had quite a bit of spangling on its mantle. List of birds seen below:

Pacific Diver - 1 (Adult)
Great Northern Diver - 7
Black-throated Diver - 1
Shag - 10+
Pied Wagtail - 2

Next stop was a 2.5hr look for a Lesser Yellowlegs which I just couldn't find though there were lots of birds present with the highlights below:

Bar-tailed Godwit - 1
Black-tailed Godwit - 1
Redshank - 30+
Greenshank - 3
Lapwing - 1
Ringed Plover - 8
Knot - 2
Mediterranean Gull - 1
Grey Wagtail - 1

Finally I began the journey eastwards and stopped at the Gunnal Estuary to have a look for the female American Wigeon which was found yesterday. On arrival the tide was totally wrong and there was not a Wigeon in site so I spent an hour walking northwards towards the mouth of the estuary but still no joy so I decided to make tracks for home. I was back to the house at c8.30pm with my tick in the bag!