Armageddipping

 Sometimes the word dipping just cannot convey the experience of what, for many, is the ultimate in dips.

I am talking about that special occasion which may only come once in a lifetime,

You do not see the rarity you have travelled for 

                       "so what  !"   you say; that's common enough

You do not see it even though it is there in front of you 

                        OK, that's a lot less common

You cannot see it even though your friends are pointing out where it is to you for 4 minutes

                        We are in Megadip territory now.

You are uniquivocally   THE ONLY PERSON ON SITE WHO DOES NOT SEE THE BIRD

                         Now this is ARMAGEDDIPPING

And it happened to me yesterday.

Here's a picture of a gannet to set the scene

One of my ambitions is to see a Feas Petrel off Britain.  A 12 hour watch off the Lizard last week failed to produce so along with a couple of my keen friends we planned a second attempt.

Where to go ? As a keen seawatcher for 40 years my opinion was given a lot of weight, far too much of course.  Anywhere within a 4 hour drive was acceptable,

The Lizard again ?  Too much spray over Bumble rock I opined... for once correctly

Berry Head ?  Two much West in the wind I asserted - There was at least one Feas past

Porthgwarra ? Too much of a crush plus too exposed esp in the afternoon as the wind changed; I predicted - Their Feas went past late afternoon 

Pendeen ? Just right I said in full Golidlocks mode , but we need to be there early to beat the crush for the best seats.

And so it was that we were the only people at Pendeen at 5.45am wondering why almost no seabirds were passing !

To be fair the day started to pick up and a trickle of others joined us. Some of them kept calling out "storm petrel behind the third rock"  and we would train our scopes again on the empty sea at that spot and mutter darkely about how hard they must be to pick up. A quick survey at this point revealled that we three were the only watchers not using Swarovski "superscopes" presumably sporting the latest in petrel spotting technology.

But you cannot really blame your equipment....not that it has stopped me since

I began to worry that I could actually miss something good. This was compounded enormously when I actually missed a whale seen by Paul G sitting to my right. In my defence it only surfaced once, right in his scope view, but even so A WHALE.

Here is a picture of one of several Ocean Sunfish we saw

By lunchtime only 5 of us remained, Two good, regular, locally based watchers who I had seen before at Pendeen and the three of us. We three were being sustained thanks to Jim's genius level idea of bringing a camping stove, kettle and water with him to keep up a regular tea and coffee supply.

Eventually the call went up;  " You need to get on This Petrel : Its bigger and gliding between feeding spells, It looks like a Wilsons "

And that is where the horror started. After a short delay Paul confirmed he was on it, seconds later Jim too had locked on.  Regular calls of : its behind the second rock, its about a telescope's view  behind the first rock, a gannet has flown past it, its over a flatter piece of sea, another gannet has flown in front of it, Its now been joined by a European Storm Petrel ( As you can imagine I particularly enjoyed that one)  there's a manxie in the same general area, Its near that white water, a big wave broke behind it then, Another gannet that might be slightly younger than the previous gannet has flown by it......Plus of course, you can clearly see the differences here, I am not sure I can see the upperwing pattern clearly enough, It definitely lacks the underwing bar Etc Etc Etc...for abou 5 minutes culminating in It must have landed because I've lost it, where did it just go and so on

At that point I knew I was in for Armageddip. Of course I still stared forlornly at the ocean for a further 10 minutes in case , for no reason at all, it suddenly turned around and flew back in front of us and magically crossed my viewing area, but it did not.

The next 10 mins passed with the four observers swapping contact details for submission purposes and with me examining my feelings.

So how did I feel ?  Disappointed, certainly, Angry with my lack of ability, Yes a bit

Overall though surprisingly relaxed. After all, Everyone did all they could to locate the patch of sea it was on, in these Covid19 days I could not ask to look through another persons scope and would not have wanted to risk losing them precious viewing time anyway, especially as these opportunities only come up very rarely.

I have actually seen Wilsons Petrel off Cornwall before albeit a long time ago. I used to live in Plymouth and had been at St Ives with friends such as Vic Tucker, Brian Field, Pete Aley and Paul Kemp for the famous 5th Sept 1983 seawatch. I have also seen a few off boats abroad 

Most importantly though, I suspect, is that It was NOT A FEAS PETREL.

So for me it was not the end of the world, though it hurt certainly, and still does hence this blog to get it out of my system. But what can I learn and do differently as I really really do not want to risk it happening to me again.

First up.

For the rest of the day I actually knuckled down to trying to see every petrel and considered I had seen 60 plus by stumps; but none of them looked remotely different.

In future I will make sure that when someone is calling birds I cannot see I will be less diffident and ask them to help me identify the correct patch of sea. Even with markers such as the rocks off pendeen, parallax and most importantly the vast differences between fields of view where one person is using a Swaro 95 BTX  (as an example, say, though I could have picked another scope, I'm not saying its the ultimate seawatching tool, or better than my 20 year old Kowa, I'm over this envy thing really) and the other is using an older scope is such that one scope's width to the left is simply not accurate enough on its own. I will say things like, "does that mean it is where there is a group of gannets at this precise moment ?" until I know I can get onto other people's birds in a hurry.

Does this sort of thing affect others ? I believe so. At about 4.45 someone arrived at Pendeen who had clearly been at Porthgwarra for the whole day until 10 minutes before the Feas petrel was seen from there. In these mass communication days news of that bird had preceded him to Pendeen and he was asked who was still there when he left who may have seen the bird. "Nobody who I ever want to speak to again in my lifetime" was his reply. His anguished and seemingly furious tone would perhaps have been better fitted with the reply "No one who deserves to survive the night"

So I feel that I got off lightly.  Now how do I set up that JustGiving page to raise the money for a new Swaro ??

So what to do next