Nick Watmough persevered with his quest to write this week’s summary and got there in the end – thanks Nick and all who assisted.

“After several false starts your POTW adjudicator finally got to sit down with a glass of wine and a full set of attributed images. And once again despite the dreadful weather you did the sightings page proud. At the start of the week Adrian Lea (Water Rail), Deena Sharp (Avocets) and Martin Webb (Lesser Scaup) set the bar high whilst Steve Rowe’s Caspian Gull was everything a photo supporting the submission of a (still) rare bird needs to be.

Adrian’s all action Red-necked Grebe from Calmansac clearly inspired Dean Pollard who headed off to Porth Reservoir on Tuesday to capture some fighting Great Crested Grebes. Wednesday saw Simon Willson submit a good selection from Walmsley including a rather smart male Marsh Harrier.

More folk out and about on Thursday meant an uptick in the number of images. Mark James did a good job of capturing how dapper the Helston drake Lesser Scaup has become and, given my fondness for the species, I enjoyed Vic Booth’s Russian White-fronted Goose from Wadebridge. Meanwhile Kathy White clearly had a good day out on the Hayle with a lovely female Goosander and a fabulous pair of interacting Golden Plover.

Kathy was back on the Hayle this time capturing a Lapwing in flight whilst Gavin Williams nicely photographed a very approachable Whimbrel at Wadebridge. However, the two images that Adil Khan obtained at Walmsley of a pair of Kestrel immediately prior to and during copulation demonstrate impressive control of the camera shutter.

Weather wise Saturday was bit pants, but it was nice to be cheered by evidence of some Fieldfares on Bodmin from Gavin. But there was more exciting news from Newlyn where Shaun Grose found and documented a second calendar year Ross’s Gull.

Well guess where a significant number of Cornish birders and photographers were on Sunday! After playing hard to get the bird gave itself up at the harbour mouth – cue lots of images with those of Nigel Rogers, Steve Cox and Ben-Hancock Smith making it to the sightings page along with another top video from John Chapple. For those not at Newlyn it was all about duck; Ring-necked Duck ( Gavin Williams), Lesser Scaup (Caroline Taylor) and Common Eider (Steve Beazley). Finally, a shout out for Reuben Veal’s Woodlark – another great example of how a quicky grabbed image can support the identification of a scarcity.

It was genuinely hard to choose a POTW from so many excellent images with different strengths. But in the end, I decided I wanted to credit Ben-Hancock Smith for his portfolio of Ross’s Gull images – seeing and photographing rarities is so much about the location and sense of occasion – greeting friends and wondering at how such an incredibly rare species arrived in Cornwall from its restricted high arctic breeding grounds. This is summed up by Ben’s iconic image of the Ross’s Gull in front of St Micheal’s Mount that has already been highly commended by Birdguides – but I am going to pick his tightly cropped and nicely exposed image – an enduring reminder of a cracking bird on a bright and breezy Cornish Sunday.

Well done Ben and thanks to all who contributed images and stuck with us in a week that we needed to navigate a few website gremlins.”