Manx Shearwaters.

You can tell I've nothing decent to report since my last post because I'm harping back into the past but the recent Springwatch TV programme about the Manx Shearwaters on Skomer island reminded me when I saw one in Warwickshire a few years ago.

I did not know until the TV programme that they were nocturnal,nearly all of them went to Skomer to breed and in the winter travelled all the way to the bottom of South America.This info. made my encounter with one even more impressive.

On the 23rd. of September 2009 a friend and I had been trying to get shots of Yellow Wagtails on the Farborough bank at Draycote Water.After a while we gave up as we couldn't get near them so we started to walk along the bank wall heading to the spit.

It was 9.30AM when we spotted this (to us both) strange bird about 30 metres out on the water.Almost immediately it took flight but we managed a few shots before it flew off west.It wasn't till a birder we showed the shots to a bit later that we found out it was a Manx Shearwater.I now know how lucky we were that day.