Yesterday..
All keen birders who slog it out at a regular watch point need a few days like yesterday once in a while.
Carlingnose Point delivered some real quality, you know it's going to be a good day when the first skuas of the day are a pale/intermediate Juv Long-tailed following a dark Juv Pom into the bay. Then both birds circled around for 20 mins as though thinking about going inland before heading back high to the East. It was a feature of the day that many of the skuas were a bit undecided and spent time circling around and U-turning. A group of 4 Arctic Skua did eventually go for it  inland and while watching them another Juv L T Skua appeared in the same field of view, this time a dark morph and joined the Arctics on the same inland course. Lovely comparison of both LT Skuas near another skua species, the one with the Pom looking really small and dainty while even the one following the Arctics immediately rang alarm bells due to its much more slender Jizz.
The skua count finished up at 2 LTS, 1 Pom,12 Arctic Skua and 5 Bonxie. After the skuas nothing else could compete really although there was plenty more of interest not least a flock of 21 Arctic Tern and a GN Diver. Plenty of passerine movement too, numbers made up by Mipits, Alba wags and more notably Skylark. I ended up with a count of 138, which I'm think must be a record for me here.
It was a definite underestimate, as understandably, there were plenty of skylarks heard only while I spent significant amounts of time grilling skuas.
I would have liked to have a pic of some skuas to put in here but none decided to come close enough unfortunately. The only thing I managed is some Skylarks migrating. Still a great sight though, any migration in action is...