4th September. You can come out now he's gone

Spent the last two weeks at the southern tip of the UK - St Just. This was the annual family holiday and not at all a birding trip. Despite this I did manage to see a small selection of rare and some scarce, but best of all I managed a lifer! A lifer? Was I privileged enough to see a suppressed gem in one of the Cornish valleys? No this was a proper tarts tick! After twenty years of trying (though not every year) I finally caught up with Great Shearwater. To make it less tarty it was a self-found tick my first since 1993 - when I found a Black-winged Pratincole at Nanquidno - which I actually cocked up as a Collared so perhaps that doesn't count. Enough rambling here's some shit photos.

Bonneli's Warbler Polgigga

Baird's Sandpiper

Some nice showey Med Gulls at Sennen

Tame Fox at Porthgwarra

and of course some pastry based savouries.

However the point of the post title was that almost as soon as I'd hooked up the caravan onto the back of the car, and headed north, the birds came out to play. The wandering Black Kite wandered within viewing distance of the camp site, a couple of Pec Sands appeared but most dissappointing of all was the 2,000 Great Shearwaters past Porthgwarra during the afternoon - making my single bird look slightly pathetic. However you never forget your first and the memory of my Great Shearwater shearing lazily inside of the Runnlestone Bouy was for me easily worth as much as those 2,000.