Patch update and a LIFER

It says patch update but it is mainly WOW with one bird on the North Down patch, an update on Cockle Island (again) and a stunning lifer in the Cooley Mountains.

We'll start local with an expected Manx shearwater  - or ten - off the coast near Bangor. 

WOW continues to deliver 30+ species of a morning. At present it has several hundred black-headed gulls, 150+ common terns and 80+ sandwich terns which are all in the process of breeding. We have confirmed breeding as well from coot, moorhen, mallard, tufted duck and shelduck. We also had a visiting roseate tern which gave quite good views if a bit distant and a male pochard also dropped in.  Ronnie got a "record shot" of the roseate so he gets the credit for that one. The temporary tern island is in place and work continues on D3. 

Roseate tern  (Ronnie Doggart)

Shelduck family, nest boxes, temporary island and piles on D3

Black-tailed godwit

Arctic tern

Shelducklings

Common tern

Mediterranean gull

Sandwich tern

The sandwich tern was ringed on Blue Circle Island in Larne Lough in June 2021 and this is the first re-sighting. An amble round Castle Espie added a singing reed warbler, a bird I normally get in England. 

A female red-footed falcon was showing well in County Louth in late May/early June. It's about 75 minutes away and I don't normally twitch birds, but it hung around and eventually I was tempted and I fell. We followed a google pin up into the Cooley Mountains, drove round a bend and there were a group of birders with scopes and cameras filling their SD cards as the bird moved between a fairy thorn, a fence and the ground. My problem was I had left my SD card in the laptop so after six shots the camera was full!! Apologies for  another record shot but it was a stunning bird.

A quick update on the Cockle Island arctic terns has good news and bad news. The good news is that there are chicks but the bad news is that the electric fence had fallen down in places and the NT chose to fix it in the middle of the breeding season. It was put up far too late in a bit of a hurry so it hasn't done the job. We live in hope!! Another two photos from Ronnie Doggart  show arctic tern chicks including one in a box kindly sponsored by Anthony McGeehan. 

Chick appreciating the shade from Anthony's box

Chick wishing Anthony had bought a second box. 

2026

152: Peregrine falcon

153: Red-footed falcon - Lifer  😎

154: Roseate tern

155: Reed warbler

NDCP patch
60: Swift

61: Manx shearwater

Belfast RSPB patch

79: House martin

80: Roseate tern

81: Pochard

Island hopping - 3 - Rockabill

 Another day another island. This was a 4 hour trip out of Malahide to Rockabill and Lambay which are in Dublin Bay. They contain significant seabird colonies on Ireland's east coast. Rockabill in particular is a haven for the rare roseate tern (1700+ pairs) with common (1600+) and arctic terns (55) as well as kittiwake(200) and black guillemots (60). It is off limits to people but we had special permission for a small group to land for a couple of hours. The island is only the size of a football pitch and has a lighthouse and accommodation which is used by Birdwatch Ireland wardens from May to September when the terns are present. It is an exhilarating place to go as you are surrounded by the sight, sound and smell of seabirds. You are also under attack and need a reasonable hat and old clothes as you may be shat upon (I was). Forget long lenses, you don't need them, as the terns are seen close up and personal. For once the point and shoot camera and the phone did the job. Lambay Island has a gannet colony plus the usual guillemots, razorbills, puffins, cormorants and shags. We cruised off the cliffs but did not land. We did however see fallow deer and wallabies which are on the island. There is an excellent one hour documentary about Rockabill on Vimeo which is well worth a watch as it will fill in a lot of background and give views which I will never get. 

Rockabill on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/462712696

I am only going to post a few photos, I took far too many on the grounds that I might not be back. As one of the other guys said, his computer will crash and die when he goes to edit everything he has on his Canon set up. 

Roseate tern

Black guillemots

Lighthouse

Common tern nest, 2 eggs & 2 chicks

Kittiwake ledges

Roseate tern boxes

Roseate tern

Common tern

Common tern and chick

Rockabill

Gannet colony on Lambay

Common tern nest on top of the wall

Under attack!!

I will hopefully catch up on the patches and general birding in a further post, but felt the islands deserved their own space as the three trips were equally memorable in their own way. Rathlin for peace and solitude, Islay and Jura for the sea eagles and Rockabill for the most amazing tern spectacle I have ever seen or am ever likely to see. 

Inishtrahull (and WOW)

Having asked for lots of rain and lower temperatures for WOW we have been stymied on both. Water levels rose briefly for a couple of weeks and we had a few waders coming in to feed, but there has been no significant rain for ten days and the reserve has dried up again and is as dry as it was at the end of July. Kinnegar is still good as it is a river estuary, albeit a small one and tidal. It is also a reasonable roosting site and has provided quite a few roseate terns. There are no terns on the reserve at all now as the planks and the islands ae are high and dry. I dropped in one weekend hoping for sanderling and picked up a golden plover. The large numbers of roosting curlew (400+) were joined briefly by a whimbrel. Last Thursday as the tide dropped and the curlew flew out we were looking at 2 curlew and 34 moorhen and that was it. A snipe flew in and dropped into the reeds and disappeared before most of us could get onto it.  The buzzard decided to land on the mud before flying off and there were finches on the feeders, but the main reserve was largely empty apart from hooded crow, magpie and woodpigeon flying through. There are always distant gulls over the Lagan and the occasional pipit, wagtail or house martin but we tell visitors to go to Hide 2, walk to the channel and go to Kinnegar if they need excitement.Talking of excitement here is a cruise liner which docked nearby two weeks ago before we lost what little water we had.

Buzzard on the mud, why??

The other highlight was a long awaited boat trip to Inishtrahull - the most northerly point in Ireland with the oldest rock, Lewisian gneiss. I finally made the ninety minute trip with 11 other birders and set foot on the island. It has been in my mind since someone brought a piece of gneiss for the school rock collection some years ago and I looked it up and thought that would be a good place to go. I never ever thought I would get there but thanks to Jim Wells and Charlie Stewart I made it over on August 29th from Portballintrae. One of the party, Anthony McGeehan, brought some chum to try and lure in a few petrels and this worked even though we only drifted around for a short time. If we had given it longer we might have attracted more, but the aim was to land on the island, so we only drifted for 30 or 40 minutes. Once the chum hit the water we had up to a dozen fulmars round the boat very qiuckly. Eventually we got good views of three storm petrels. The bird of the trip was a sooty shearwater seen on the return leg without the aid of any chum at all. There were two with about 40/50 manx shearwaters and they were easy enough to pick out once Anthony spotted them. The group list for the trip was as follows, my sightings are in bold: fulmar, sooty shearwater, manx shearwater, storm petrel, gannet, cormorant, shag, grey heron, eider, sparrowhawk, oystercatcher, whimbrel, curlew, great skua, lesser black-backed gull, kitiwake, guillemot, puffin, rock pipit, wren, wheatear, skylark, chough, hooded crow, raven, starling. I also saw sanderling and ringed plover on the beach at Portballintrae. All in all a magic day despite the buffeting on the way there and back. At least the boat is covered so we stayed dry. The downside of this was getting onto a bird and having a large wave hit the perspex and losing the bird!! Fortunately the sooty stayed in view long enough for us all to get a look at it. Here is a selection of pictures which gives you a flavour of the trip. The first four are by Michael Jackson who is clearly a better photographer than I am - which wouldn't be hard. He also has a better camera as well.

Sparrowhawk by Michael Jackson

Seals by Michael Jackson

Great skuas by Michael Jackson

Great skuas by Michael Jackson

Every dot is a watching seal!!

The harbour and the eastern half of the island with the ruins of the old lighthouse on top of the hill.

Inishtrahull once was home to 80 people , the last islanders left in 1926 and once the lighthouse was automated no one lived on the island.

Lighthouse

Looking east from the new lighthouse to the old lighthouse

 

These rocks are slightly further north and technically the most northerly point, but they are inaccessible.

Lewisian gneiss

"A wild and lonely place" - Private Fraser, Warmington-on-sea

2018  
153: Roseate tern
154: storm petrel
155: Great skua
156: Sooty Shearwater - LIFER 😎

Bangor West
69: Razorbill
70: Common tern

Belfast WOW
92: Golden plover
93: Whimbrel

The doldrums of July and August

Despite not having a lot to say I decided to give a progress report on the off chance that I have too much to do later in the month. We should be seeing early autumn waders but I suspect any which are around will simply fly elsewhere when they see the state of the water levels.  WOW is as quiet as I can remember mainly because there is virtually no water at all and anything with wings has died or flown out. There is ample water at Kinnegar as the river is still flowing there and most ducks and waders have simply re-located. The reserve still provides a high tide roost but little or no feeding. Even the terns are roosting at Kinnegar. I will do a report on Kinnegar in the near future for those of you who are unfamiliar with the geography of the area. Visitors who drop in to WOW wonder what all the fuss is about and many of our regulars have stopped coming so we are at a bit of a loss. There is not even counting to do to while away the time as there is nothing to count. Here is what has happened since late July. 

The monson of late July covered about a third of the reserve with one or two inches of water. Everything turned green for a week.

Unfortunately it all disappeared in the next week and since then it has steadily got worse. Today it looked like this and we struggled to 21 species although Kinnegar added another 10. The fact that it waas low tide at 0920 probably didn't help.

 There are over 50 moorhens in the reserve but sometimes you see none at all and at other times 30+ appear from the reeds, some still come up to the window looking for millet.

The 21 species did provide a couple of good birds in a peregrine which occasionally does a flypast and a roseate tern which has been around off and on for a week or more. It is ringed and originates from the colony at Rockabill near Dublin.

Roseate tern 

This little beauty boosted the year totals but other than that things are slow! Roll on the autumn migration, a good soaking and lower temperatures - I can't believe I just wrote that!!

2018  
153: Roseate tern

Bangor West
68: Manx shearwater

Belfast WOW
91: Roseate tern