As you can see from the title I found a good bird on Thursday at WOW. Seeing as I have been birding for 40 + years there's not much chance of picking up a lifer in Northern Ireland. Generally it is an overseas trip that adds lifers to the list. Sometimes one pops up elsewhere and I go to see it - cue the rustic bunting in Carnalea in December 2021 - but I struggle to remember the last time I had a lifer on either of the patches. The last one was probably the Wilson's phalarope in 2007 at WOW. The difference this time is that I found it, identified it and called it in. Fortunately a couple of experienced birders saw the post on NIBirds and came along to confirm the sighting (Thankyou Bob Watts and Aaron Long). The bird in question was a tiny wader called a grey phalarope, which has a particular method of feeding which involves going round in small circles picking up insects off the water. That's when I decided it wasn't the common tern juvenile I thought it was. The main problem was that I had never seen one before and it took me a while to work out what it was. It was a lot smaller than I expected as well. The said bird then got added to quite a few lists. Regular readers will know that I like lists!! So this one found its way onto the following lists: 2023, WOW, Life, County Down, Northern Ireland, UK. As well as the phalarope we had 40+ species including 9 grey herons, 6 little egrets, 11 cormorants, 2 ruff , 2 common sandpipers and a common tern. I have added my very distant poor photos as well as a link to NI birds where people who have good cameras and know how to use them have posted their much better photos. There are other photos on subsequent days which are worth a look as well.
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| Little egret |
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| Common sandpiper |
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| Grey heron |
2 - Moving and feeding by picking insects off the water, terns don't do this so alarm bells start ringing.
3 - We are now thinking grey phalarope, consulting books and calling in a possible sighting. Note the size compared to the moorhen, a really dinky wee bird.
4 - Zoom in from photo 1
The oracle that is NIBirds is found at this link:
Elsewhere things have been slow as we enter the last 3 months of 2023 and try to mop up a few missing species on both patches. Firstly I looked through the lists to identify what I need to be looking for between now and Christmas. This led to me adding a few birds I had seen earlier in the year and forgotten to add to the lists. (Yes I am as shocked as you are!). So I was able to add skylark seen on Islay in March, a jay which flew across the garden in March and greylag geese which flew over the house about two weeks ago. WOW also added a Bonaparte's gull and a black tern both found on the beach at Kinnegar as well as gannet and razorbill offshore in the lough. There was also a distant pair of stonechats now that the taller vegetation has been trimmed. In terms of what I need to see the main omissions are dipper, redpoll, siskin and reed bunting. Hopefully the feeders at WOW will do the trick there but I might need a visit to Mossley Mill for the dipper. I'll finish off with photos of last years Bonaparte's gull as this years one was even further away than the phalarope!!
2023
155: Curlew sandpiper
156: Bonaparte's gull
157: Black tern
158: Skylark
159:Grey phalarope. Lifer 😎
+ USA/Canada: 26 = 185 for the year.
NDCP
67: Greylag goose
68: Jay
Belfast RSPB
87: Bullfinch
88: Gannet
89: Bonaparte's gull
90: Black tern
91: Razorbill
92: Grey Phalarope 😎
93: Stonechat
