8 oktober 2011 - Westkapelle again

I don't remember much about last night, being awake early, staring all day, then the beers meant that i slept well! I was the only guest in the hotel, and the lady (who had to come and unlock the hotel for me) thought she was doing me a favour by giving me a room with a seaview....i explained to her that i would be gone before it was light and with that information she kindly stocked me up with bread/cheese/ham/juice and coffee so i could eat breakfast in my room.
I was back at the telpost early and we had another great day. Todays companions were Peter Meininger, Pim Wolf, Gerben Mensink, Thomas Luiten, Kees & Rina Renes & Roland Jansen.

Todays totals were slightly lower than yesterday but some of the views were outstanding with my favourite memories of the day being the juvenile Long-tailed that flew south with 2 Arctics (no photo as it was just sheer enjoyment) as well as the number of skuas that i picked up flying over the land or at least over the dijk, with singles of Great and Pomarine coming very close (the latter producing a simultaneous cheer from the crowd!) There was also a huge Dark-bellied Brent Goose migration, a Dutch day record being broken with nearly 16,000 birds and from late morning onwards there was a massive movement of Chaffinch. A count of 20,000 was logged on trektellen.nl but in reality most of us were too enthralled by the seawatching to break away and count. Needless to say every time you followed a skua inland the binocular image was plagued by Chaffinch and Meadow Pipits. There was also a 1cal yr Goshawk eating a Coot.
Seawatch totals were 18 Bonxie, 23 Poms, 50 Arctics, 1 Long-tail, 17 skua sp, 3 Sabs, 10 Leach's, 1 Grey Phal and 3 Sootys.