Au revoir mes amis.....

Que sera, sera whatever will be will be,
We're going to gay Paree,
Que sera, sera.

Last proper post for a while as we are off to join the army for three weeks, the Green and White army that is, or as they say in France "L'armee vert et blanc". Things have been quiet since I last posted with a couple of visits to WOW where we now have common terns looking like breeding and black-headed gull chicks hatched. Apparently there are two med gull chicks as well but they are hard to spot.

Common tern

The black-headed gull family

One of five tufties

We also did a return trip to the Gobbins to see the seabird colony. We had good views of guillemot, razorbill, kittiwake, shag, cormorant and gannet but dipped out on Puffin. You get reasonably close to the breeding ledges and if you have a better camera than mine you could get some nice shots. Margaret Adamson did so on her blog here:

http://birdingforpleasure.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/through-my-lens-gobbins-walk-part-1.html

This is the first of six posts on the Gobbins and you will see that she did see one more puffin than I did.

With only a couple of walks along the coastal path it was going to be hard to find new birds. Whitethroat could not be found and gannet pushed the list up by one. Basically I was away too much in May, and June is not going to be any better. However three weeks in France might boost the year list.

Kittiwakes on the nest

WOW patch list:    
78 Bullfinch
79 Blackcap
 
West Bangor patch list:

64 Gannet

2016 list 

166 Gannet
167 Kittiwake