Big score at Shite Lane!!

Had an hour this am before I was supposed to go to work so I decided to chance my arm with the light easterlies overnight. Out round the head at first light for 2 wheatears, while a skove down the top lane produced a late swift. Not much doing then, but I still had Shite Lane to go...

Quiet enough there too at first, before a weird phyllosc call caught my ear - kind of like a willow warbler "hoo-eet" call but higher pitched and thinner, kind of like someone doing a bad impression of a willow warbler. Views of the bird proved scarily interesting, clearly a phyllosc, with a pale grey head, a wide supercilium, greeny fringes on the primaries, dark legs and really clean pale grey/white underneath. When a willow warbler hopped up beside it, it was clearly bigger! "Help" I thought, "a Bonelli's Warbler", before ringing and texting frantically! By the time other folks arrived, I'd heard that the call fitted Western, as Eastern should give a "chip" type call apparently.

A couple of folks heard the call & got on the bird again briefly a short time later, and it showed well briefly again this pm, but was seemingly elusive for the rest of the time. Hopefully it'll behave better tomorrow!

patch tickage baby yeah!

Well, the inevitable finally happened! A calm and dry morning first thing so I hurried back down to the scoter-scanning-spot to try my luck at bagging the lingering velvet scoter off Cloghna Head (approximately 1.5 miles off-patch). The scoter flock was still there, diving just off the rocks at the base of the head, seemingly unperturbed by the still fairly huge swell. It was quite easy to pick out the female common scoters, despite the salt spray, but seeing any kind of detail of the head pattern on the other birds as they bobbed up and down was pretty impossible.  However, my luck was in, as after only a few minutes, the velvet scoter flapped its wings briefly, and the white wing feathers shone out! Patch tick! Whoop! 30 minutes later, I clocked it again from the lay-by on Cloghna Head, on the way home from the school run - confirmation that the velvet hadn't morphed into a white-winged scoter overnight!

As the morning remained calm and dry, I had a quick scout around for migs, but couldn't do better than a solitary chiffchaff - the migrant floodgates are still to open hereabouts!

Final score of the day came in the form of a flyby 1st winter iceland gull from the dinner table this evening - April does seem to be the most regular month for these guys - another valuable year tick, bringing up the 90 with only a handful of migrants so far! Plenty still to get!

long tail larging it

Scanning for the green-winged teal from the patio this morning, I was rather surprised to see this!

Yes indeedy, a female long-tailed duck no less, and a full fat patch tick! One that has occurred on patch in days of yore but not very often. Long-tailed ducks used to be reasonably regular at certain sites in east Cork but seem to have become a fair bit scarcer in recent years. This is only my second for the county, and possibly Ireland, as I can't recall seeing any elsewhere, the tart that I am!

Anyway, it was a most welcome addition to the patch list, now standing at 193. Good early bonus for the year too! The male green-winged teal remains on the lake also.

more seawatching fun

July passed in a blur, with a fair bit of effort put in but little or no reward! However a run of south-westerlies at the start of August surely had to bring more seabirds to the coast?

An early session on the 1st produced 4 great shearwaters, 14 sooty shearwaters, 1 pomarine skua and 72 puffins, while another morning watch on the 2nd scored 2 more great shearwaters, a couple of large shears and 17 sooties. With conditions looking good that afternoon I headed out again and on arrival was rooted to the spot for the next 6 hours! After a heavy shower, Cory's shearwaters began streaming steadily past in small groups at a range of distances from shore. They were coming by every minute or so. Now and again, great shearwaters would also come through, either singly or mixed in with groups of Cory's. My two clickers were put to good use as over the next few hours numbers crept up, until It was almost dark, but they were still passing. The tally finished up on 1,000+ Cory's shearwaters, 32 great shearwaters, 52 sooty shearwaters, 5 pomarine skuas, 7 bonxies, 3 arctic skuas & 40 puffins.

Back for more at first light on the 3rd. The lighthouse had been on when I'd left the night before, and was still on when I arrived, but with the wind still blowing out of the south-west I had to go back! The first bird through the scope was a Cory's - had they been passing all night? By the end of the session, I'd racked up another 310 Cory's shearwaters, 32 great shearwaters, 61 sooty shearwaters, 4 pomarine skuas and 7 bonxies.

If anything, conditions looked better by the afternoon, with heavy showers passing through and the wind increasing a little. As luck would have it, I was able to escape both work & the kids again and flaked back up. Numbers of Cory's were lower by now, but there was a higher proportion of great shears in the mix, meaning you really had to concentrate to separate the two at times - great practice! Another four hours passed quickly, with 154 Cory's shearwaters, 58 great shearwaters and 32 sooty shearwaters in the bag. However, the best was left till last when I finally scored a long-tailed skua at Galley! Skua numbers had been good that afternoon, with 10 pomarine skuas, 5 bonxies and an arctic skua through, so when KC called up another arctic, I thought I'd liven things up by saying "it looks a bit delicate", as I was still trying to find it in the scope. Five seconds after seeing it, we were both repeating "it looks a bit delicate", and then the penny dropped! Fantastic to finally see one off Galley, and it was only my second for Cork, after a juv on Cape way back in September '91. This was a cracking adult, albeit without the tail streamers, but awesome none the less!

Rainbow's end produced Long-tailed Skua shortly after 

I was quite relieved when the wind finally swung away from south-west that night. Looking back, it was an amayzing spell of seawatching, and easily my highest tally of Cory's in one day. Wonder if that's seawatching over for the year? Hope not - must go check Windfinder...

patch bogey nailed at last!!

An amayzing day on patch!! Galley was heaving with common migrants, and the birding was great! It was a bit like a uk east coast fall, I guess, not something that we are used to over here! The common stuff consisted of at least 200 willow warblers, 150 wheatears, 40 blackcaps, 20 sedge warblers and 10whitethroats, while scattered in amongst all these were 4 grasshopper warblers, 3 whinchats, 3 cuckoos, 2 redstarts, 2 lesser whitethroats and areed warbler. My best moment of the day was walking a hedge with willow warblers flitting everywhere when suddenly, bam! a garden warbler jumped out in front of me! Patch Tick! Patch Bogey nailed! In a day of big winds, it was the showiest bird I saw, which was just as well as its taken me 9 years to get one on patch! Ridiculous!

A call of black kite late in the afternoon had us all out scouring again, but no joy! However, the day wasn’t over as a tree pipit called explosively from somewhere, 2cuckoos appeared from nowhere and a short-eared owl came in being mobbed by corvids – only my 3rd one on patch, and 1st one for several years! Excellent altogether!

With patch gank like ringed plover, manx shearwater and common sandpiperall falling too, the final tally on the year list front was 12! That where to watch birds in Ireland Galley section definately needs a re-write now!! (103)