Hard to believe the year is now three quarters of the way through, the nights are drawing in and the winter visitors are on their way or have recently arrived - brent geese, whooper swans and pink-footed geese. The patch birding has slowed to a crawl and I have only added curlew sandpiper to the 2025 list.
The North Down patch is marooned on 63 with very little chance of reaching the 70 target. Best I can do is a picture of a stunning sunset from the top room window looking west.
The WOW patch can still raise the pulse rate on the odd occasion, but still remains 3 short of the 100 bird target. I added curlew sandpiper this year after drawing a blank last year. Three turned up at the very back for about a week. We also had a brief glimpse of a kingfisher and a pair of flyover ravens. The final addition was a gannet scoped from Kinnegar which was closer to Whiteabbey than Holywood, but hey - if you can see it while standing on your patch it counts.
I have tried to connect with the influx of glossy ibis and black terns but have not succeeded. A few days in Donegal didn't add any new birds to the list but it did however add 3 species to the County list - black-tailed godwit, bar-tailed godwit and Canada goose. The Canada goose was seen at Inch levels in a flock of several hundred feral geese split between Canada and Greylag. I had no idea there were large feral flocks in that area.
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| Whooper swan (Credit to Ivor Greer) |
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| Inch levels from the hide |
As well as several hundred geese there were 6 whooper swans and several pochard which seemed to be a trifle early for winter arrivals. They looked more like they had remained over the summer which threw me completely. Comments on this welcome, particularly if you are familiar with the Inch levels and have first hand knowledge. We picked up bits and pieces en route but nothing stunning or worthy of a photograph.
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| Glenveagh Castle was bird free apart from chaffinches INSIDE the café feeding on food scraps and crumbs. |
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| Lovely walk along an old railway line below Muckish which needs re-visited in spring. It was also bird free although a Force 6 breeze didn't help. |
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| Pollet Great Arch had a couple of stonechats on the way down and small families of meadow pipits. |
There were also fulmar, gannet and Manx shearwaters off Fanad Head but I really was not best equipped for a three hour sea watch and I suspect my travelling companions would have rebelled at the thought.
144: White wagtail
145: Curlew sandpiper
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