Over the last week local fisherman have been on cloud nine. For some reason absolutely huge numbers of whitebait have come close inshore, and these have been followed by thousands of mackerel. Locals who've lived here for 40 years haven't had it like this before, with shoals even coming in to the harbour where people have been able to catch them with nothing more than landing nets! It was amazing watching the whole harbour 'boil' with fish.
Bizarrely, many of the whitebait were even jumping out of the water and on to the beach, presumably to escape the mackerel...
It's not just people who have come to get some fish, large numbers of Gulls have been here daily with up to 2000 along the beach most of the time...
Despite regularly checking them, I haven't found anything better than two different juv Yellow-legged Gulls. The second one was actually on the Estuary, and I just about managed to get a picture of it...
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| The one coming in to land. You can see a dark secondary bar, and a very white tail with a narrow black tail band |
Gannets have also been loving the food, with 300 in an hour early on Thursday. The biggest surprise came on Thursday afternoon though, when whilst out driving in the works van I spotted an Osprey fishing just off the beach! And amazingly it's still here - I've seen it fishing out there every day since...
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| It was raining and very gloomy when I took this pic |
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| Sorry chaps, you will never be as good as the bird flying above you! |
Friday morning of last week I had my second Beer Head ringing session of the autumn. I will update all on that another day as it's time for bed...
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