Evening, always fascinating to read the accounts of a sea watch and the direction/time of movements of birds. The birds that are heading west today, are they reorienteering to head out of the North sea to the North over Scotland? Or does anybody think some maybe looking for a way to cross over land following river courses perhaps through the Wash area ? I seem to remember some of the Peterborough birders picked up Skuas following the river last year at Guyhirn after winds from a Northerly direction. Perhaps more birds than we realise use this method and do fly up the Great Ouse/Nene/Welland and maybe at night ? Also as a possible explanation as to why certain birds are seen at one watch point and not at others is down to where a bird makes landfall/reference points it may be using i.e heading south down the North sea and Beeston Bump is an obvious point to see to the East but then so is the high point to the West of Sheringham where the coast guard lookout is. The birds maybe using this as a ref point too ? Also!! Due to the parasitic nature of Skuas are they perhaps following other birds - Kittiwakes mentioned in a previous post, to use them as a food source and they just go where the flocks go ? Hope i haven't bored anyone these are just the musings of a landlocked birder with a glass of wine in his hand !! I think someone should take the plunge and organise an Autumn pelagic out of Sheringham in one of the crab boats and see what else is lurking out there 2-3 miles out to sea !!!!
Steve
Hi Steve, had a few of the olde this eveing myself so i'm on your wavelength, Olsen in 'Skuas and Jaegers' says that Long -tailed being the most pelagic species generally heads straight out into The North Alatantic and goers directly towards the wintering grounds. Lts do perform post breeding dispersal though, filtering out into the North Sea, were there is a rich supply of food before the big migration that presumably involved few stops. This either involves them flying back over Scotland or carrying on down into the channel
http://www.trektellen.nl/trektelling.asp?telpost=148&site=0&land=3&taal=2&datum=20091001
I think you are bang on with the theory that birds use the Bump as a migration post. Has anyone looked at the Bump from Cley, its doesn't just look like a reverence point but like a headland. If you are a Skua out to sea and you see a landmark that looks like a headland but you don't want to fly in a Southerly direction past that headland you probably would not want to fly in that direction (you need to look towards Sheringham from Salthouse or Cley to see what I mean). This ties in with the fact that birds east of the Bump were flying East today nd all the birds West were going West. Possibly this explains why there is a paucity of LTs sighting on the East coast, there is a bigger area of land West of the Bump. A couple of years ago I had a day were about 15 Poms came in off on a line just to the West of Sheringham then moved West - surely they were using the bump as a landmark.
I'm basing this all on the wind direction today which was not particularly strong, it actually got stronger directly after the Skua passage - did they know! Different wind strengths and conditions will pose completely different questions.
Regarding parasiticism, there weren't too many Kittis moving with the Skuas but I'm beginning to feel that Skuas migration involves team-work possibly in relation to all four Skua species. All the Skuas came through together today but i reckon there is also a hierachy in place. The Arctics were following the flock of Poms and you can generally find Lts at the back of a flock of Arctics - maybe tagging on rather having direction themselves.
