IOS Aug 6th - 9th

from left to right - Archie Archer, me & Mike 'The Marquis' Feely.

I really can't be arsed to write a load of bollocks about our 4 day trip to Scilly. Apart from some memorable non-birding moments, the trip as a whole was a wash-out. Lowlights included 'chartering' a taxi to twitch a Grey Heron that some cunt had put out as a Squacco, No decent sea-birds on a 9hr pelagic SW of St Marys plus having no photographic equipment due to my battery dying the night before and having no pissing electricity supply on the camp-site, a tent that was designed for Dwarfs (and leaked!), stupidly over-inflated prices for food, Wilson's & Great Shears being seen on the pelagic trips we didn't do and the timely appearance of a Spotted Crake & Lesser Yellowlegs moments after we had left the archipelago. I'm sure there's plenty more to gripe about but I'm trying to forget the whole episode. Highlights, if that's what I'm to call them, include (just) six year-ticks - Sooty Shearwater, Bonxie, Storm Petrel (6th August), Grey Phal' (7th August), Balearic Shearwater & Arctic Skua (9th August) - taking my total to 261, daily sightings of Basking Shark including one beast that swam just yards alongside the Sapphire on our Saturday pelagic, a Blue Shark that was expertly caught, landed, tagged & released on board the Sapphire, an Hummingbird Hawkmoth on St Marys, the daily quest by all three of us to locate plug sockets in various Scilly establishments in order to illegally steal electric to power our mobiles, some extremely memorable laughs, Mikes sunburnt mush, and perhaps THE highlight of the trip - Adam Archer being 'spooked' in the dark by a 'demonic voice' on the campsite! I'm pretty sure Arch will pen a more in depth & entertaining account of our trip so best to check there if you feel the need to know more.



above - ASBO birders base-camp and below the Hummer on St Mary's





above - The Red Baron & Arch hunt for plug-sockets and below the object of our desires on that first evening on Scilly! If YOU found this and rptd it has a Squacco, you owe me £5.50 for a wasted fucking taxi!