It was another day with barely any wind and so the sea was very calm. Perfect for spotting dolphins and sure enough at Fife Ness this morning there were about 20 – 40 passing and heading north in a leisurely fashion. A lot of jumping out of the water and tail slapping by the smaller and presumably younger ones in the group. Of course my count is probably wildly inaccurate. At any one time there were only about 12 visible spread across 3 spatially separated groups, but assuming they don’t all come up together…One dolphin was very distinctive though with a white line on the top edge of its dorsal fin and three white marks along the base: once you can recognise individuals then estimating numbers becomes easier. If the marked individual is the sixth dolphin you have seen when you see it surface again then there are six dolphins, although you need to average over a long run of sightings and resightings, or have a few more individually recognisable individuals to be accurate. In any case, more dolphins than usual today and quite a lot of them. Birdwise it was fairly quiet although the kittiwake flocks were in a bit closer, 5 km rather than 10. At Kilminning I had a flock of 4 mistle thrush making 90 for the Crail year list.
Bottlenose dolphin
Wild Crail 
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