Still no water

Not a lot to report really as the lists are stuck where they were and there has not been a lot of rain. We managed 21 species at WOW including two buzzards and two ravens. Kinnegar added a few more including a count of over 170 red-breasted mergansers. Mallard and shelduck both flew over the reserve, had a look, and flew on.There was the usual curlew roost which contained some oystercatchers and a few black-tailed godwit, otherwise it was same old, same old as the following photos show.

Buzzard eating a meal, possibly a moorhen.

Curlew and oystercatchers

Resident hooded crow

Raven

Raven with magpies in attendance

Flotilla of moorhens on the mud

Every dot is a moorhen

Sometimes there are no moorhens to see and then gradually they appear out of the reeds and spread over the mud. We still have 80+ around the reserve, but then they get spooked and dive for cover. These 40+ are down to the right of the observation room. There are another 40+ over to the left and quite a few on the far side where Hide 2 is. A visit at the minute guarantees moorhens, hooded crows, magpies and wood pigeons, anything else is a bonus or a flyover. If the feeders are operational we can add goldfinch, greenfinch, chaffinch, plus blue, coal and great tit. As usual it is worth checking Kinnegar lagoon and shore, this week we had knot, 2 sandwich tern, bar-tailed godwit and teal. It has been a trifle damp of late so hopefully water levels will start to rise - watch this space!!

The coastal path has not produced much, but then there isn't much left to add. The high tide roost at Seacliff Road gave good views of waders but I decided not to bring the scope and camera as I could
not be bothered carrying it - bad decision - as high tide and bright sun behind me made conditions perfect for pictures. The following are taken with an ipod, think what a good camera wuld have done with ringed plover, turnstone, purple sandpiper, redshank, and oystercatcher all perched up on the rocks. Throw in a great-crested grebe close in at Strickland's Bay and I could have had a field day. This was the first time I have ever seen a grebe here and the first time I have seen one so close in. Normally they are scoped somewhere in Ballyholme Bay at the outer limits of the patch. Note to self is to look for a high tide and a good day and bring the equipment!!

Ringed plovers

Ringed plovers and turnstone

Redshank

There's the grebe

GCG

GCG

 

 

Nice gannet, very close in to the shore.

Steady work and progress

WOW is still very dry and giving around 20 species with a bit of effort, add in Kinnegar and you get up and around the 30 mark. Unfortunately we are struggling to find wintering wildfowl and waders at WOW and are relying on Kinnegar shore and the lagoon. Teal and mallard are common but so far we are missing out on shelduck, gadwall, shoveler and wigeon. Either they have not yet arrived or they have moved elsewhere. Any interesting birds are usually on the far side of the reserve and well out of range for pictures.

Close up magpie

Lets look at the tern islands

........ could do with a drop of water!

Since I last posted I have observed over 20 meadow pipits, ravens, swallows and house martins (Sept 24). We also have had a pair of stonechat and wheatear briefly a well as a fly through jay. Kinnegar turned up a little egret and a kingfisher while there were razorbills offshore and sanderling on the beach.

Walks to Kearney and Ballyquinton Point turned up all the usual suspects including my final swallow on September 30th and a mixed flock of about 150 finches feeding in stubble. The coastal path has been well walked this week to try and add curlew which is a major omission on the NDCP patch. Still three months to go however so all is not lost. The gannets have gone as have the terns and the brent geese have arived in numbers. They have been seen at Kinnegar and eleven flew over WOW last week.

2018  
156: Sooty Shearwater - LIFER 😎

Bangor West

70: Common tern

Belfast WOW
94: Sanderling
65: Razorbill
96: Wheatear
97: Little egret
98: Kingfisher
99: Jay

Kinnegar

Seeing as WOW is still dry and not producing a lot of birds, Kinnegar is worth a visit as you swing in and out of the Harbour Estate. There is a small stream flowing in to the sea at this point. It drains the marshy area betwen Holywood Exchange and the A2. This is the area bisected by the railway line  between Holywood and Sydenham. It usually has coot, moorhen, mute swan, tufted, mallard, moorhen, grey heron etc.. I am sure there are interesting birds in the reeds but access is either impossible, illegal, dangerous or possibly all three!!

Still a bit on the dry side

There is a causeway at the landward end of Kinnegar Pool accessed by a rough path close to the Clare House Overflow Car Park. Cross the causeway and you are into an area of reed and scrub which is good for passerines and spring migrants.

Causeway looking upstream towards B&Q

Causeway looking towards the lough

Where the river reaches the sea you can look upstream to the causeway or out to the Lough. At low tide the mud is covered with waders and gulls. At high tide they can roost on the shingle or on the lagoon. The lough itself needs checked for sea duck, divers, auks and grebes particularly in winter. The scrubby woodland around the lagoon can produce lots of small birds and apparently holds reed warblers - I have failed to see or hear them . The lagoon is good in summer for hunting/roosting terns and is a favourite hunting ground for swallows and martins. House martins and swallows collect mud here for their nests.

From the road looking towards the causeway

From the road to the beach

River mouth looking to Belfast at low tide

River mouth looking to the Irish Sea at low tide

Lapwing in the lagoon

High tide from the road

Roosting waders in the lagoon at high tide

The exposed mud at low tide gives scope views of a variety of birds - oystercatcher, redshank, knot, dunlin, turnstone, ringed plover, bar-tailed and black-tailed godwits, curlew, shelduck, brent goose, and up to five types of gulls. The lagoon holds mallard and teal with occasional shelduck, gadwall and tufted duck. Like any body of water it can throw up unexpected visitors. Roseate tern, little ringed plover and yellow wagtail have been seen. Lists have not been updated as there is nothing to update. NDCP has reached the expected 70 and WOW is on 93, hopefully some wintering ducks and auks will push it up. Until we get serious rain at WOW I am not expecting any exotic waders to boost the list. At the minute we are looking forward to returning winter wildfowl but are worried that they will go elsewhere.

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

Mud, mud, glorious mud!

Last week saw the WOW reserve even drier than the week before. We managed around 30 species including some returning waders - curlew, bar-tailed godwit and ringed plover. A peregrine put in three appearances and most of the waders vanished, but not before we had counted them. There were 2 arctic terns and one sandwich as well as 400+ common terns. The most interesting sight was a Mediterranean gull chick (one of this year's young) eating a common tern chick. The adult terns were giving it grief, but it wasn't moving and by this stage  the chick was well gone. It was seen doing the same over the weekend, so must have decided it's an easy meal.

Med gull with common tern chick

Med gull with common tern chick

Med gull with common tern chick

Med gull with common tern chick

Bar-tailed godwit and curlew

Mud.....

mud.....

glorious mud

Common tern (and mud)

In it's former glory

Water, water everywhere

There was a lot of rain on Saturday, Aldergrove recorded 88 mm in 3 hours. The July monthly average is 91 mm. It was not as heavy as that in Belfast but hopefully there will be some improvement this week. No updates to 2018 totals, they haven't changed.