Saturday 24 February 2018

Common Dolphin record strandings

Over the last month or so a disturbing number of Common Dolphins have been washed up on the Connemara coastline. This has been mirrored all along the western coastline of Ireland. I've never encountered so many in such a short period during my nine years based here. As the name suggests Common Dolphin are by far the most numerous cetacean that is found stranded here. I've only ever death with one live stranding. Of the six recent Common Dolphins I've seen four appear to have died around the same time period. Two of the animals had broken upper mandibles which has been suggested to be a sign of mortality from fishery bycatch. IWDG have recorded a record breaking cetacean stranding year on year and 2018 already looks like it is going to out do 2017. 267 stranded cetaceans were recorded in 2017. Have a look at this recent piece on this recent mortality event of Common Dolphins.
"Common Dolphins Dying in Ever Increasing Numbers in Ireland"
http://www.iwdg.ie/news/?id=2723


Very young male calf Common Dolphin, Tully Beg, 12th February 2018.
Adult Common Dolphin, Rossadillask, 25th January 2018.


Adult Common Dolphin, Lettergesh East, 21st February 2018.

Adult Common Dolphin, Lettergesh East, 21st February 2018.

Adult Common Dolphin, Aillebrack, 23rd February 2018. Broken lower mandible. Note the ironic marine litter in the background..

Adult Common Dolphin, Aillebrack, 23rd February 2018.

A few other bits and odds during my recent local travels were this very freshly dead Little Auk found at White Strand, Tully Beg while visiting one of the stranded Common Dolphins. I've only had a handful of Little Auks ever. They do seem to be rather rarer in the last decade or so.

I also had the colour ringed AJAT Mediterranean Gull again in Mannin Bay on 14th February. This bird was ringed at Pionierinsel Lühe, Steinkirchen, Stade, Niedersachsen, Germany as a chick on 17th June 2006. I first had it at Mannin Bay on 22nd October 2012. I've had it here on and off since including once up at Omey Island which is only 12km away. It has also been re-sighted at Presall Sands, Pilling Lane, Lancashire England and Wissant, plage, Pas-de-Calais, France in 2006 and 2007 respectively. It returns to breed around the Hamburg area of Germany sometimes on an island on the Elbe River and once on a factory rooftop. 
Iceland and Glaucous Gulls continue to be seen in good numbers throughout Galway. 

A white phase Gyrfalcon was seen sitting on the side of the road beside Bunowen Pier, Ballyconneely by Graham Roberts on 13th February at 0130hrs in the middle of the night. Graham initially thought it was a Herring Gull but on a second look realised it was an unknown bird of prey. He tried taking a photo with his phone but realised his battery was dead so he drove back to the house to collect a camera. Ten minutes later when he returned the bird was still present! It later flew off into the darkness so it was probably just exhausted and not physically injured. It may have been offshore and hit mainland after sunset. Unsurprisingly it was never seen again :-( Another (same?) Gyr was recently seen up on the Mullet peninsula by Dave Suddaby. I shudder to think of how many I've dipped on now at this stage. It has to happen one of these day fingers crossed!

Little Auk

Little Auk

German colour ringed adult Mediterranean Gull, Mannin Bay, 14th February 2018.

Saturday 17 February 2018

2018 White-wingers

A selection of shots of several individual Iceland, Kumlien's and Glaucous Gulls that I've encountered in the last month and a half in Galway. It seems to be a rather good winter for white-wingers after a few recent duff winter.
Another American Herring Gull would be greatly appreciated. The last AHG found in Galway was a first-winter found in January 2008 while the returning adult bird was last seen in February 2011. There have only been six records for Galway, half of which were recorded during the 1990's. It's a little perplexing as to how few records there are for Galway (compared to Cork or Kerry) considering the amount of gull watching that has taken place here especially in the two or three decades. There was a nice smart first-winter recently seen at Cashen in county Kerry, hopefully we might get another here some time soon..

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Nimmo's Pier, 14th January 2018.

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Nimmo's Pier, 14th January 2018.

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Nimmo's Pier, 14th January 2018.

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 22nd January 2018. Same individual taken into care and released at Nimmo's Pier three weeks later.

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 22nd January 2018. Same individual taken into care and released at Nimmo's Pier three weeks later.

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Ardmore Bay, 16th February 2018.

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Ardmore Bay, 16th February 2018.
Third-calendar Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 16th January 2018.


Third-calendar Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 16th January 2018.

Adult Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 31st January 2018.

Adult Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 31st January 2018.
Adult Kumlien's Gull, Omey Island, 15th January 2018.

Adult Kumlien's Gull, Omey Island, 15th January 2018.

Second-calendar Glaucous Gull, Bunowen Pier, 22nd January 2018.

Second-calendar Glaucous Gull, Bunowen Pier, 22nd January 2018.

Second-calendar Glaucous Gull, Bunowen Pier, 22nd January 2018.

Second-calendar Glaucous Gull, Bunowen Pier, 31st January 2018.

Saturday 3 February 2018

The Netherlands December 2017

A belated post on a short trip over the Netherlands I did back in December. I flew into Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on the morning of the 12th and left again on the afternoon of the 14th. The primary goal of the trip was to try and catch up with Lesser White-fronted Goose and Red-breasted Goose. I succeeded in accomplishing the latter target but was rather unlucky in the former. There had been several reports of different Red-breasted Geese on and off during the previous month at a few spots across the country. The nearest report was only a few kilometres north-west of Rotterdam from where I based myself for the next two nights. My trip coincided with decent amounts of snow which had been on the ground for a few days. Every road was perfect but it did have an effect on the birds especially the geese. After going through several hundred geese (the majority being Russian White-fronted and Greylag with smaller numbers of Barnacle, feral Canada and Egyptian Geese) I eventually picked up a pair of Red-breasted Geese which had been previously reported in the general area of Noord-Kethel. They were in a relatively small flock of geese but were about 800 metres away. Even at that long distance they were obvious enough especially for a goose! It would have been nice to have decent look at what was a lifer for me but I should glad I managed to see them at all. With the poor light already decreasing I made a bee-line for the Lesser White-fronted Goose location - Oudeland van Strijen. This is one of the main wintering grounds for the small Swedish breeding population. I ran into a helpful Dutch birder who pointed me in the right direction. I also had good information on the location thanks to the very useful Waarneming.nl website. The Dutch birder also mentioned that the snow could have pushed off the geese to another snow-free site. I searched the spot until dark but didn't get a sniff of any LWFG.

I started my second day at this same spot first thing in the morning after eventually managing to escape the Rotterdam traffic. I could see that the snow was slowly starting to disappear but there were still significant snow coverage. While scanning from the car I managed to drain the car battery of the rental car. The automatic headlights remain on if the keys are left in the ignition. Lucky I managed to convince a passing local to give me a hand to jump-start the bloody thing, lesson learned! After a few hours without any success I decided to head out to the coast and birded the area near Stellendam. This consisted of more polderland, sand dune systems, saltmarsh and mudflat. A few nice species here included Spoonbill, Cetti's Warbler, Firecrest, Snow Bunting, Brambling and Twite.

I only had a few hours to spare on the third day before flying home. Most of the snow had now melted. I was back again at the polderland near Strijen to look for LWFG. There was huge increase in the numbers of geese in the area particularly Barnacle Geese which had been largely absent the two previous days. There must have been several thousand geese in the whole area. I again searched the usual LWFG spot from all angles but had no joy. With an increasing mind-numbling migraine pounding in my head I called it a day and made my way back to the airport. I checked a large park within Rotterdam hoping for a few woodland species but saw little of note to be honest. I'm not sure if the Netherlands has a national bird but if not then it should probably be Eurasian Coot with the huge amount of water in the country, they seemed to be everywhere. It was interesting to see so many Great White Egrets throughout the country. I even managed to "twitch"three Cattle Egret at the LWFG site, they are still considered a rarity in the country. I didn't see a single Little Egret though?
I took virtually no shots during the three days. Shortly after arriving back in Dublin I checked the Waarneming site to see if there had been any news reported from my last day. It was a little soul destroying to see a report of 23 Lesser White-fronted Geese and a single Red-breasted Goose from Oudeland van Strijen after I had left!

Cattle Egret, Oude van Strijen, Netherlands, 14th December 2017.

Cattle Egret, Oude van Strijen, Netherlands, 14th December 2017.

Common Buzzard, Oude van Strijen, Netherlands, 14th December 2017.

Common Buzzard, Oude van Strijen, Netherlands, 14th December 2017.

Red-breasted Goose, Noord-Kethel, Netherlands, 12th December 2017.

Noord-Kethel, Netherlands, 12th December 2017.

Noord-Kethel, Netherlands, 12th December 2017.