Oooo'err missus

The twitching world has gone berserk. It is not often you get a totally new species for the country. Getting two would be remarkable. Getting 3, all of the same species, is probably unheard of. About two weeks ago some birders took a phone of a strange looking gannet off the coast of Kent. On reviewing it on their computers they put it out onto the interweb and the answer came back of "it looks like a brown booby". This cousin of our gannets should be the other side of the Atlantic and has never ventured over our side before. The photo was compelling but not definitive enough to clinch the ID and the bird was not seen again. A few days later the alarm went off again. A brown booby had been seen off the Cornish coast near St.Ives. This time, although a long way off, the photos looked good. A gannet-like bird with a clear white/ brown demarkation on its chest and a dipping flight when fishing as opposed to the kamikaze dive of a gannet. The following day the bird was "probably" seen in very poor weather with a lot of claim and counter-claim as to whether it was there or people were "stringing" juvenile gannets. It was intermittently seen over the next two days. On Saturday though it gave itself up big time with stunning photos of the bird perched on a rock in St.Ives bay. By now it had even appeared on the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2, no doubt driven by the "booby" moniker. There certainly was a lot of comment about the number of people trying to take booby photos on the beach!!! Then it disappeared again.
With my nephews staying at the start of the week I assumed that was my chance gone of connecting with it. However, another alert went out at the start of the week. A brown booby seen in Cornwall at Kynance cove on the south coast near the Lizard. Most remarkably the photos showed it to be  different to the St.Ives bird So, at least two, possibly three different individuals in the UK plus another in France! This one was sticking and got into a routine of being seen every day in the bay fishing and preening. So, it had to be done and I decided to go for it on Friday.
A trip down to Weymouth on Thursday night put me one third of the way there but it still needed an early start to get to the Lizard by dawn. I was on the road about 2.20am and by gone 4.30 was stopping for coffee in Cornwall!

By 6 I was pulling into the car park ay Kynance cove. Normally you would expect to have it to yourself at that hour. Today though there were already over a dozen cars there. Some had lights on and you could see people peering out, having coffee or dozing waiting for dawn.

As the light started to come up the car park started to stir. Cars opened, people came out having coffee and buns, getting their 'scopes and cameras set up, visiting the loo and greeting their neighbours, By 7 a line of twitchers moved out like a camouflaged wagon train. The booby was last seen going to roost on "gull rock" which is off the eastern side of the car park but requires a walk of about a mile to get to the best viewing point.

We spread out in 3 groups long the cliff top and started scanning.

The booby had been showing around 9 so by 7.45 with no show we were not overly worried. Suddenly the guy next to me called it "flying right from the rock". A mad panic of people spinning 'scopes round and we were onto the bird. Typical gannet shape, long wings but brown above and the shape brown/white line on its breast. It flew round twice then landed on the rock at the extreme right in the photo above, a long way away.

This is an uncropped image at 500mm. The light was poor and it was a nightmare to get onto the bird. One of the 8 of us had it in their 'scope but it took ages for all of us to find it. Fortunately once it landed it stayed in the same place.

This is the best I could really get and is massively cropped. It shows all the features you want though. The gannet profile, the long blue/grey bill, pinkish feet and that brown-above, white below plumage. With all of us on the bird we tried to alert the other groups who were a few hundred yards away on the other side of the bay. We shouted (useless in the wind), waved (they didn't look our way), and put the word out on the internet (very weak signal). Finally they got the message and a stream of birders headed our way. Realising the difficulty of seeing the bird and the danger of it flying off we set up a couple of 'scopes with the bird in the frame ready for the new arrivals. As they got to us we made sure they saw the bird though it proved hard as it was so well camouflaged. For two or three people I had to work hard to get them to actually see the booby even though it was dead centre in my 'scope.

With everyone on it and now two viewing areas set up we watched it for 90 minutes as it preened, dozed, looked around and thought about going fishing. About 10 it finally flew off into the bay but went out behind the rock from our view. We headed down into the bay but it was not playing ball and headed far out into the bay to fish.
With rain starting and a long journey back I called it a day and headed off home. Six hours later I was back. A great if very long day. A bird you just had to go and see and so glad it behaved for us all. Let's hope its not the last rarity of the Autumn.