We spent a few hours gazing out to sea from St David's Head between late morning and mid afternoon. The usual resident auks (mostly razorbills and smaller numbers of guillemots) were feeding offshore, as were a few resident porpoises. Quite a few guillemots and some of the razorbills were in summer breeding plumage.
We recorded a distant red-throated diver and a closer inshore adult Med Gull (both heading south) but the star performers today were kittiwakes. Initially we noted a feeding flock that built up to around 500 along the Carreg Trai reef. Later though we noticed a very much larger flock feeding to the north of North Bishop, about 5-6 km out from our position. This relatively huge feeding flock numbered at least 2,500 (probably 3,000+, possibly considerably more than this!) we were just too far away to count them accurately. Hundreds at a time were dip-feeding as other birds were coming in and joining the flock from the north-east. Overall the flock stretched across an area of about 3km (between 290 and 325 degrees from our position) and was present for more than an hour, sometimes resting on the sea, at other times actively feeding.
We've regularly seen kittiwakes feeding off the Head but never before in such huge numbers. We've seen quite a few scoters passing through over the last six seeks or so but none were recorded today.
