Natural Selection

Trying to find interesting birds and wildlife can lead to being trigger happy, and jumping to the wrong conclusion. But sometimes the opposite applies, and you can sleepwalk into missing or almost missing something. This blog is about an example of the latter this morning.

As I’ve probably said before on here I don’t get to spend as much time seawatching as several locals who’ve retired. In those circumstances it’s easy to not bother, but today I made the effort to get out before work. It was a lovely day, rather nicer than the picture above suggests and almost flat calm.

I was on Middle Walk watching some gulls offshore getting quite excitable, and mused to myself that if it was summer they might be attracted to a bait ball with possible Bottlenose Dolphins in attendance. I looked through the scope and a porpoise was doing its best dolphin impression breaching the surface, which was nice. A porpoise day is always a good day.

I’d started scanning for other things but when I returned to the gulls something wasn’t quite right. There seemed to be three or four porpoises, they were rather too active and above all their fins were too large and pointed. They had to be dolphins, but they were small.

Further out in the Irish Sea I’d have had no hesitation calling these Common Dolphins, but Common Dolphins aren’t common in Blackpool. In fact in over 20 years regular watching I’d never seen one. Fortunately one leaped clear of the water and the contrasting flanks were clearly visible.

So today I came rather close to sleepwalking through a special wildlife observation. It made it all the sweeter that I realised in time, and that others were also able to mobilise and enjoy these scarce visitors to our waters.

One I took in Biscay, but giving a good impression of the features seen today when one dolphin jumped clear of the water