Carrick Roads and Devoran

This afternoon, Calum and I went up to Carrick Roads with the hope of seeing one of my bogey birds...Black-necked Grebe. For Calum too, it would be a new bird, so surely, we had to find them! The problem is that Carrick Roads is large and with few access points, viewing is difficult. We first tried Mylor Harbour as our view point. A few Shags were offshore and a group of 9 Turnstones were roosting on a small boat. We walked further along the shingle until we reached a spot where we could scan from. Another 10 Turnstone were feeding here. After a good look very distantly I across a small raft of birds, Calum got onto them and we both confirmed they were *Black-necked Grebes,* 14 in total! Finally we'd seen them but they were distant and seemed closer to Foeck, so we headed up there to get some better views.
On our way we called in to Devoran to check the wader roost. A smaller number of birds were present than on previous visits but the Spotted Redshank was still present with about 100 Redshank, 1 Knot, 36 Blackwit, 30 Dunlin, 5 Barwit and 60+ Curlew.
The light was just beginning to fade by the time we got to Feock, so we quickly set up the scopes and started looking for the grebes. I noticed a large gull roost that stretched right down the east side of Carrick Roads, mostly Black-heads but there was also a lot of Med Gulls, with more birds arriving all the time. I was curious to see how many Meds were there, so slowly, I worked my way through the roost and by the end, the tally was an impressive 115+ Med Gulls! By now Calum had re-found the raft of grebes and although still distant, they were closer than before and finally some good views of these smart grebes were had.

Curlew Sandpiper at Devoran on the 14th