I was rather disheartened during the morning, as with a flat calm sea I saw a further 5 migrant corpses floating past- including a larger bird that looked like a kestrel. I'm surprised that such a strong flyer ended up drowning, and have little hope for many of the much smaller, weaker birds that tried to negotiate the sea crossing during the recent bad weather. Anyway with such little breeze today, most of my seabird counts consisted of loafing Cory's and the usual larus sp. gulls sitting about on the sea. With minimal seabird action and fine conditions I had great hopes for some vis mig goodies but this was also rather limited with just 6 Stonechats and a flock of 12 duck sp. heading north.
All the stonechats adopted the same strategy in that they each dropped onto a part of the ship, hung around for 10 or 15 minutes catching flies and small moths and then resumed their northward passage. At least we were steaming north at 5 knots so it felt good to give them a helping hand!
With such unusually calm conditions it was possible to see into the water and admire a few medusae so I tried a couple of snaps to pass the time.
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