Yesterday we witnessed a very large pod of dolphins feeding off the end of Peninnis – I have never seen so many dolphins together before. All of the individuals we saw were short-nosed common dolphins – it is hard to give an exact number of animals but it was probably between 200-300. At one point the pod (maybe 4-5 individual pods) stretched over 1km and was associated with hundreds of feeding / diving gannets.
Here are a few pictures (quality is low as the dolphins were several hundred metres away)
Three dolphins along with some gannets
After watching the dolphins for around an hour they eventually went out of sight heading off towards Gugh. We then set off to look for a wryneck and a snow bunting. At one point I thought this might be my best wryneck picture – the brown splodge in the grass!
Fortunately it popped out and sat on the nearby brambles
Whilst the birding on Scilly has been very pleasant there aren’t many birds around with only a smattering of migrants. However with the recent easterly winds the East coast of Britain has seen an unprecedented fall of very rare migrants including a ‘first for Britain’ – a Siberian Accentor – there have now been 6 different individuals recorded from Fair Isle down to East Yorkshire. These events have made the birders on Scilly rather envious!
The British ‘accentor’ is better know as the dunnock – we didn’t want to miss out……
Here is a tweet about the Siberian Accentors in Britain – the easterly winds are back on Scilly today and we are expecting a storm on Sunday – high hopes therefore for Monday.
A Dartmoor blog 