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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

What's the most unusual bird you've seen on a seawatch? (1 Viewer)

On pride of Bilbao in 2003 had Masked Booby land on the ferry and roost overnight.Got up early next mornin to see it take off as we were heading towards the Spanish mainland.Imagine the crowds at Portsmouth if the boat was heading towards the UK.Other birds that landed on the boat were Ortolan,Grasshopper warbler,Yellow wagtail and Turtle Dove
 
Strangest bird ive had on a seawatch has to be Budgerigar heading up the Thames from Canvey point, not often you see a bright yellow green bird over the sea! next best will have to be a lanner falcon at the same location, heading in from the mouth of the thames, obviously knackered it rested on a pontoon for 5mins then flew off, no jesses either!
 
I've seen different raptors and passerines arriving from the sea along the Norfolk coast but the strangest was a Nightjar which flew straight past me and into the nearest bush at Sea Palling in May last year.

The strangest creature was a Nile Crocodile seen swimming toward shore at Kotu Point in The Gambia, October '94.
 
Strangest and also one of the best thing I ever had on a seawatch was a Snowy Owl from the German Coast to the Baltic Sea...

Seen the bird first in the binocular on about 1 km ... big white - probably swan... one look with the scope and I saw yellos eyes!!!

A real pleasure!!
 
Not on a seawatch, but whilst travelling by boat from Harwich to Bergen a Kestrel was perched on the radar system. Must have been about 10 miles from Harwich when I first saw it and it was still there several hours later at nightfall. Was gone the next morning.
 
David FG said:
I agree that a Woodcock is not nearly as rare as a Hoopoe, but one would not be totally surprised to see a Hoopoe coming 'in off' (how else would it get to the UK?) but I do not expect to see a Woodcock doing the same - just as I would be surprised to see a Turnstone in a wood.
Click to expand...

Woodcock do cross the north sea into east anglia for winter so they are seen flying inbound from the sea. A turnstone in the woods though i agree, no chance.
 
A few years ago a claim of an in off Wallcreeper in Kent was rejected on the basis that the description given matched Red Admiral butterfly.
 
I was standing on the tip of Cape York which is the furtherest North that you can be in Australia in was in November 1998 and a cloud of Rainbow Bee-eaters came across from PNG it was truly spectacular
 
A peregrine falcon 40 miles offshore, out of Cabo Frio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was migrating north and passed quite close to our boat.
 
a swallow skimming the sea about 200 yards out in stormy sea :O at findhorn bay
and probaly a crate floating at spurn point or large lump of polysterin which terns were rying to land on solway firth
 
i haven't had many unusual passerines in off yet but stuff like Red Crested Pochard and Little Grebe strike me as quite unusual. Be interested to know if anyone has had Ruddy Duck, Mandarin or anything like that,

Got a mate on the south coast who has had Night Heron, Cattle Egret, Honey Buzzard, Osprey, Montagu's Harrier, Black Kite, Nightjar fly in off, but by his own admission he's spent more time in his life seawatching than sitting on the bog.

Snowy Owl is my dream bird to have fly in off.
 
During a recent birding trip to the sub-antarctic we had a starling on the Bounty Islands, a small group of rocks covered in albatross, penguins and fur seals about 800 kilometres east of New Zealand.
 
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