Venus Pool - Heron vs Carp!

I've seen Herons catch and eat all sorts of prey (Water Rail, Moorhen, Mole, large Eel and various fish) but today was as outrageous a catch as I've seen! I thought I'd post the whole sequence, it was quite gruesome to behold but the fish was very quickly moribund so didn't know much about it!!

Caution - the sequence contains serious 'threat' and violence...

This was the moment I became aware a (very one sideed) battle was brewing, one of the local Herons had speared a Common Carp and brought it ashore. After two more serious strikes to the head, I think the fish was a goner anyway!

Then clearly favouring a nicely cleaned fish, all the mud was washed off

With a rinse here and there...

The next stage was lining up the fish for it's terminal journey!

There's no going back now...

And it rapidly slipped out of view...

Gulp!

The whole process took exactly 1 minute which shows what efficient killing machines Herons are! And a couple of minutes later, it was back out stalking more unsuspecting quarry...

Venus Pool - Greenshanks

Two juv Greenshanks at the pool today and showing really well! Here's the first...

Come in no 2, with darker wings...

And if the water gets too deep, Greenshank are quite happy to swim!

The Little and Large show as the juv Dunlin stole onto the scene...

Dunlin coming next...

Venus Pool - juv Dunlin

I'd settled for some distant record shots of this juv Dunlin up until today, then the little fella showed as well as I've seen one at VP!

The light was overcast to start with...

But gradually improved and so did the images!

Slightly surreal given how distant all the waders have been until now!

There's a juv LRP lurking here too, one for another day...

Porthellick - Ruff duo

A bit of strimming of the reeds had worked wonders at the 'Sussex hide' end of Porthellick Pool and the waders were now roaming up and down the margin!

Two Ruff gave some fantastic views... Here's the smaller female

Followed by the larger male...

Then both together...

And as I tweeted, that's the size difference sorted then!

Scilly Pelagic - Blonde Long tailed Skua

We went East today in the hope of something different and special and we certainly scored on that front! A call of "Skua" got the pulse rate going and on size this was a Long-tailed Skua! A juvenile as usual but a really striking pale morph dubbed the 'Blonde morph' by Bob....

After trying to sneak in on the Storm Petrels, it tried it's luck against the larger Gulls!

With no more success...

Then a fly past worthy of any air show! (Got the same shot twice!)

What an awesome plumage pattern!

Slipping away, not to be seen again!

Everything seemed stand-offish today, including the Storm Petrels...

And a disappearing view of one of the (2) Great Shearwaters...

Where's Cory's??

scilly pelagic - Wilson's once more...

There were 14 Wilson's Petrel on view past the boat this evening, here's a selection of images from the latest 'feast'...

Never really close today, it was get what you can as they passed the stern...

Heading on up the slick where some of them loitered feeding...