Tuna!

19th October. A day of South Easterlies that brought rare Wheatears and exotic Robins to the east coast, and to me sat on the end of Portland Bill ... nothing. Obviously that's not strictly true. But a handful of Kittiwakes going west wasn't really doing it for me so I got ready to leave, but another birder was on his way down so we joined up and admired an empty calm sea with a setting sun.

Some gulls began to hang around about 100 yards away from us. And then some more, and then some Gannets, and then some more Gannets. The suspicion that something was happening was confirmed when my fellow birder shouted 'Tuna!'

I scanned and soon found a rear end going into the waves, then a back breaching the surface, then a whole fish in mid air briefly before it plunged down into the water. Wow. They are huge. Not just long but barrel-shaped, powerful, compact and muscular. I kept scanning, seeing more and more signs of activity, and at one point on a scan counted seven individual tuna. This went on for a good half hour, a frenzy of charging tuna and diving gannets. Occasionally one would be almost on the surface speeding across no doubt after prey, but generally they would become briefly airborne before plunging back down. 

Everyone reading this will know what was happening. A pack (shoal seems too tame a word) of Bluefin Tuna round up a shoal of small fish and coral them into a tight ball and force them up to the surface, then they tear into them in a feeding frenzy which attracts sea birds to form a melee of savagery.

Organised attacks by predators on prey provides some of the most memorable of nature's wildlife spectacles. People travel thousands of miles to see Lions hunt Wildebeest, Cheetahs charging across he plain, Tigers chasing deer. I felt this evening I was watching one of those great spectacles, Tuna hunting down their prey. Definitely one of my all time top wildlife moments, and all from the everyday location of the Dorset coast.