Creggoduff Beach, Ballyconneely, February 2018.

Another post mostly following up from the previous one. Two more Common Dolphins washed up on the shoreline at Creggoduff beach in front of the Connemara Golf Course in late February. Thankfully given the more easterly winds the numbers of stranded Common Dolphins haven't been hitting the Irish coastline in the last fortnight or so. That isn't to say however that they aren't still being killed in large numbers offshore. It's probably just the case that they aren't being pushed ashore. Up to the end of February of this year 87 Common Dolphins have been recorded stranded. Only ten years ago a total of 25 Common Dolphins would have been the norm!

The amount of marine litter washed up on the shoreline was depressing. The huge majority of it seems to come from the fishing industry mostly in the form of discarded ropes and netting. For an industry that relies on a healthy marine ecosystem to support sustainable stocks of commercial fisheries it seems utterly illogical for the same sector to wreck the environment so much. The large foreign trawlers can't take all the blame for this however as the the small inshore Irish boats are equally if not more responsible. Washed up along the same shoreline I recorded 1 Iceland Gull, 1 Gluacous Gull, 1 Kittiwake, 8 Fulmars and 2 seal species, all dead.

Common Dolphin, Creggoduff Strand, Ballyconneely, 26th February 2018.

Common Dolphin, Creggoduff Strand, Ballyconneely, 26th February 2018.

Bottlenose Dolphin, Creggoduff Strand, Ballyconneely, 26th February 2018.

Fishing industry marine litter, Creggoduff Strand, Ballyconneely, 26th February 2018.

Fishing Industry marine litter, Creggoduff Strand, Ballyconneely, 26th February 2018.

Plastic litter, Creggoduff Strand, Ballyconneely, 26th February 2018.

Dead adult Iceland Gull, Creggoduff Strand, 26th February 2018.

Close up on the open primaries of the dead adult Iceland. Note the grey on the outer web of p10 and to a much lesser extent on p9. Probably not well marked enough to call it a Kumlien's-type.

Adult Glaucous Gull with an adult Herring Gull, Aillebrack, 23rd February 2018.

Adult Glaucous Gull, Aillebrack, 23rd February 2018.

Adult Glaucous Gull feeding on a dead seal, Aillebrack, 23rd February 2018.

Adult Glaucous Gull feeding on a dead seal, Aillebrack, 23rd February 2018.

Chough, Aillebrack, 23rd February 2018.

Chough, Aillebrack, 23rd February 2018.

Chough, Aillebrack, 23rd 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.

Omey Kumlien's and the NEWS

I've being doing several Non-Estuarine Waterbird Surveys (NEWS) now since December. The survey is due to finish up by the end of the month. I think it may be struggle to try and get all of the sectors that we've signed up due to the incessant poor weather we had for most of December. It has settled down noticeably in the last week and with luck will hold for a while yet. The survey involves walking around a few kilometres of coastline to count all waterbirds using the shoreline. It aims to cover as much of the coastline that isn't covered by the regular Irish Wetland Bird Survey (I-WeBS) and is only undertaken every eight or so years. Connemara as a rule doesn't hold much in quantity or quality of wintering waterbirds even compared to east Galway and Galway Bay for example. Despite this however it's great to get out to stretches of coastline that I only rarely if ever visit. Who knows there's always the very slim possibility of stumbling across an Ivory Gull or a Gyr Falcon. The best bird I've managed to come across while undertaking the survey was a second-winter Kumlien's Gull on Wednesday on Omey Island. Unfortunately I recorded the bird after finishing up the survey and it was just outside of my assigned sector anyway. It was seen slowly flying south over the island after coming from the direction of Lough Fahy. The camera settings weren't quite right so the shots came out very dark and I've had to brighten the shots up a little. This is my first "white-winger" of the winter, hopefully I'll have a few more before the winter is out.

While walking along the coastline it's been a good opportunity to discover other items of interest. I've have found two dead Common Dolphins so far in the Ballyconneely area. The animal below was found today. As can be seen from the shots it was entangled in green fish netting. It's possible that the animal may have become entangled post mortem in inshore waters as it was being washed onshore. It was lightly wrapped around the snout but it was caught tightly at the base of the tail fluke and if it was the case that the animal was entangled while alive it certainly would have resulted in its demise. Dolphins do regularly get caught in commercial fishing nets and usually died from drowning. When found in nets fishermen will usually cut off the tail flukes to remove the dead animal from net rather than cutting the net. In this case this section of netting was cut away so I'm not 100% sure what happened to this unfortunate animal but the fact that it was caught tightly on the tail doesn't look good.

There have been several foreign supertrawlers off the Galway/Mayo coastline over the last month or so. These ships can hoover up a huge tonnage of commercial fish. Large amounts of discards ("collateral damage") are evitable in these operations. These boats have received a lot of bad press here in Ireland recently because they are seen as decimating Irish fish stocks and people would rather see Irish fishermen doing the decimating instead! Nothing is usually said of the very same damage that an Irish fishing ship of a similar scale can do to non-target fish and other marine life.
On another note the amount of plastic refuse which is continually washed up on every single metre of Irish coastline is staggering and depressing in equal measure, the majority of it coming ships of one description or another.

Second-winter Kumlien's Gull

Second-winter Kumlien's Gull

Second-winter Kumlien's Gull

Common Dolphin entangled in fishing netting.

Common Dolphin entangled in fishing netting. Left hand side of the body in a much better condition than the right.

Common Dolphin with the net removed from the snout.

Close up shot of the head with the netting removed.

Inveran Common Dolphins

This mother and calf Common Dolphin were reported to us during the week. They don't look like they are too long dead and may have live stranded before being discovered. The fact that the female and the large calf were only metres from each other may add to this theory. Interestingly the mother had noticeable cuts/marks to the body. I wonder if they were actually inflicted by another dolphin not long before death and may have something to do with the animals stranding? These marks do not appear to from random rocks.

Large calf Common Dolphin

Adult female Common Dolphin

 

Close-up of the body of the female.

 

Closer detail of one of the rake-like marks on the female.

 

Old healed scar on the calf. There didn't appear to be any fresh wounds on this individual.

 

And yet more Glaucous Gulls!

First-winter Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin feeding on dead Common-type Dolphin, 20th January 2014.

 

First-winter Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

First-winter Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

First-winter Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

First-winter Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

Adult Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

Adult Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

Adult Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

Adult Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

First-winter and adult Glaucous Gull, Inishbofin, 20th January 2014.

 

Achill Fin Whale and Common Dolphin

This male Fin Whale live stranded on the Keel beach on Achill Island, Co. Mayo on Christmas Eve. It died shortly afterwards. It's about 17 metres long. Unfortunately when an animal of this size accidently/purposely strands itself there's nothing that can be done practically to save them or even humanely dispatch them (though I think I heard of a technique in USA where they sometimes apply shaped explosive charges to the heads to euthanize stranded large whales!).
A bit more information on this stranding here on the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group website http://www.iwdg.ie/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2450:fin-whale-live-stranded-on-achill-island
The weather was absolutely horrendous as it has been almost without fail here now for two weeks straight.
Less than a 100 metres away from the Fin Whale there was also a dead Common Dolphin, an amazing coincidence. It had washed up dead two days previous to the Fin Whale. Cetaceans of this size can be refloated but usually when they strand themselves they are normally in very poor health or even terminally ill. I've heard of horror stories of people who try to refloat large cetaceans by pulling them back into the water with machinery, only to break their spines or seriously maim the poor animal in the process.

With an adult Glaucous Gull in attendance.