June/July 2014 shots

A few random shots from the last month or so.

Common Guillemot, Puffin and Black Guillemots, High Island. There are no breeding records of Puffin for county Galway.

Puffin, High Island.

 

Mother and calf Harbour Porpoise, Inishbofin.

Second adult Harbour Porpoise that was associating with the mother and calf above.

Some of the 1,200 Manx Shearwaters gathered off Inishbofin on the evening of 1st July. Many were calling. They breed on the sea stack called Dún na hIníne off the NE corner of the island. I think the numbers of breeding birds here have been severely under-estimated.

Bilberry, also called fraochán in Ireland and very similar to Blueberries. Only now found in areas with no grazing e.g. islands as they seem to be very sensitive to grazing pressure. They are quite rare now in Connemara unfortunately.

Close-up of a Bilberry, nice little snack while out looking for Merlin in late June.

 

Common Sandpiper

Common Sandpiper

 

It's raining Manxies

Every September I get a few calls about strange "seagulls" in peoples back gardens, more often that not in Clifden town. Nearly without exception they turn out to be Manx Shearwaters.
The main breeding colony in Galway is on Cruagh Island which is located West of Omey Island.
The first and only complete census was undertaken during the Seabird 2000 survey when 3,286 pairs were recorded using the playback method. Amazingly the colony was completely unknown up to this point. They only visit their underground during the hours of darkness so they can easily remain unseen to most visitors to the island during the daytime. Its a common sight to see a few dozen dead shearwaters shattered around the island during the summer and are most likely predated on by Great Black-backed Gulls. While it does look very bad it's all part of the natural life cycle of your typical Manx Shearwater colony and with at least 7000 adult shearwaters present, the rate of mortality amongst adults is very low in relative terms.
A lot of the young are now leaving their nest burrows and get disorientated by the lights of Clifden town at night.
I came across one in the middle of the main street of Clifden on Saturday night and managed to rescue him. Doubt he'd last too long there between cars, cats and dogs. They find it virtually impossible to get airborne in enclosed spaces. I subsequently got two calls about two other shearwaters stranded in peoples back gardens in the town. I released them all out along the Sky Road where they have a much better chance of reaching the open sea. However as I released the bird below he promptly flew up to about 100 metres or more and headed back East inland! There's only so much you can do and hopefully he managed to reorientate himself.

Shark fishing trip

I got out with John Brittain of Blue Water Charter Fishing http://seafishingireland.net/ last week on a Blue Shark fishing trip. I managed to last about 2 hours but after that I was completely out of action with seasickness and really couldn't care less what was flying around the boat!
I didn't see a huge amount up to that point anyway save for a few dozen Storm Petrels, a single Sooty Shearwater and 2 Great Skuas. The shark fishermen caught at least half a dozen Blue Sharks all of which were successfully released back.
Can't say I'll be in a hurry to head back out to drift up and down and side wards on a small boat any time soon..

Great Skua

Adult Kittiwake, moulting.

European Storm-Petrel

European Storm-Petrel

Juvenile Arctic Tern

Juvenile Arctic Tern

Manx Shearwater

Northern Gannet

Inis Meáin July Birds

I took a spin out to Inis Meáin on Saturday 13th July mainly to check to see how the breeding terns are doing out there this year. The island is usually home to good numbers of Arctic and Little Terns which all breed on the beach on the North side of the island. I was disappointed to say the least to find no Little Terns breeding and only single figures of Arctics breeding. This has become a regular fate of nesting terns here in Galway in recent years with many of the large tern colonies having disappeared and while these colonies can be ephemeral in nature with terns regularly moving to different islands we haven't come across any major colonies on any of the Connemara islands in recent years. Hard to know what exactly the problem is but I would tend to think lack of food may be one of the significant factors.
I was also out there to look for the rare Great Yellow Bumblebee which now appear to be only found out on the Aran Islands having apparently completely disappeared from mainland Galway, more on that later.

Only Little Tern of the day with Arctic Tern.

First-summer Arctic Tern, I've previously noticed near double figure numbers of this age class at this colony which is a little odd.

First-summer Arctic Tern.

One Arctic Tern still trying his luck.

Arctic Tern

Pair of Arctic Terns.

Arctic Terns

Sandwich Tern also seemingly still in the mood, a few acquiring winter plumage already though.

Adult Common Gull mid way through primary moult.

Pair of Common Gulls giving a Lesser Black backed Gull the good news.

Eurasian Oystercatchers

First-summer and adult summer Eurasian Oystercatcher.

Adult summer Eurasian Oystercatcher

Manx Shearwaters

Skylark