After some intriguing reports of Storm Petrels off the Suffolk coast at Thorpness the previous day, courtesy of the excellent BINS information service, I set off on Saturday morning to see if I could locate them for myself. The date was 07/07/07, surely the luckiest day ever!

On arrival the weather was excellent and I set up my ’scope on the cliff and began scanning the sea with my ‘bins’. It was nearly an hour before I located a bird skimming across the water. This was a first for Suffolk for me and I was somewhat excited as I settled down to watch this enigmatic little sea bird feeding 200m or so off shore. After about ten minutes I decided to pan ahead of the bird to see if I could find any more, and within a few seconds I picked up an Arctic Skua flying low and fast over the water. As I tracked its progress south the Storm Petrel appeared in my field of view and the Skua, now in attack mode, grabbed it in mid-air and dropped onto the water shaking the petrel from side to side. Amazingly it escaped and flew a few metres but was soon taken again by the skua, its fluttering flight no match for this agile pirate. This happened four more times, and my heart was in my mouth as I watched the drama unfolding in front of me; I remember saying to myself “fly little bird fly”, and then it escaped one more time and the skua broke off the attack and carried on its journey.

I know we shouldn’t get too emotional when watching nature in the raw but this seemed a one sided contest with only one outcome, and I certainly didn’t want to see my first Suffolk Storm Petrel going down the throat of a skua.