Sisyphus

What it is about seawtching, that makes us spend so much time seeing nothing? In any other kind of birding I'd give up and go home much earlier. I guess it's the selective memory, of remembering only the good birds and adrenalin-filled moments over the years, and erasing all the long hours of seeing bloody nothing. Combine that with a certain degree of masochism - that's seawatching.

Arrived too late this morning at Jaffa. Shachar and Barak actually had a good couple of hours before I arrived, but as soon as I got out of the car the birds stopped. For the next few hours Schachar and I saw very little. Two distant 'Cory's' Shearwaters (could be scopoli's of course), one Gannet and that was it. Both Shachar and myself had to leave, but we played a stupid game of 'chicken' - I think we were both one hour late because we didn't want to leave the other one alone to see the petrel (that never came of course). Eventually we both left together.