Murlach Cattle Egret

A few more random shots from the past Autumn including Galways only second record of Cattle Egret. The bird was picked up by David Rees on 30th September down by Murlach. It hung around for at least two weeks.
A few shots of some of the returning Icelandic colour ringed Oystercatchers which will very shortly be heading back North. Also a young Peregrine which was unsusually perched on telephone wires.

Cattle Egret, Murlach, 30th September 2018.

Cattle Egret, Murlach, 30th September 2018.

Juvenile Peregrine, Murlach, 13th October 2018.

OO-W(PA) colour ringed Oystercatcher, Bunlough Strand, Co. Mayo, 14th September 2018.

OO-W(PA) colour ringed Oystercatcher, Bunlough Strand, Co. Mayo, 14th September 2018. Ring already damaged on one side, only ringed in May 2017.

RL-W(AA) colour ringed Oystercatcher, Inner Mannin Bay, 10th August 2018.

Waders Aug/Sept 2017

A selection of shots from the last two months or so, mostly colour ringed birds. Nothing of note in Connemara since the White-rumped Sandpiper., any day now ...

Ruff, Gortnagarryaun Strand, Co. Mayo.

Juvenile Ruff, Gortnagarryan Strand, Co. Mayo.

Adult Little Stint, Omey Strand.

Adult Little Stint, Omey Strand.

W3YBYG Sanderling ringed in Parc Nationale du Banc d'Arguin, Mauritania, 3rd Dec 2015. Seen at Gortnagarryan Strand, Co. Mayo, 6th August 2017.

R7RYRY Sanderling ringed in west Ghana, 10th Sept 2015. Seen at Gortnagarryan Strand, Co. Mayo, 6th August 2017.

G3RBYG Sanderling, Omey Strand, here last autumn also.

G1RRRW Sanderling, Omey Strand, returning bird since 2011. Has lost a green flag on left tarsus.

Sanderling colour ringed on North Ronaldsay, Scotland this May seen at Omey Strand.

G3YWBW Sanderling, Mannin Bay, here last autumn also.

G3RRWB Sanderling, Mannin Bay, here last autumn also.

A rather bedraggled Golden Plover

Icelandic colour-ringed Oystercatcher, Ballyconneely Bay. This bird was re-colour ringed this summer in Iceland as some of the original rings had fallen off.

August Colour Ring Reading

Not a huge amount to report on the rare bird front since the Royal Tern which has subsequently turned up down in the Shannon Estuary moving between counties Kerry and Clare. Evidently this bird must have flown south via Galway unseen! It's performed a lot better than during its short stay in Mayo and has been widely twitched at this stage. Most of the shots below were taken just with phone camera so the quality of most isn't great. I had to get the Canon 7D cleaned recently as there were two nice big specks of dirt caught on sensor which were showing up on the pictures. I haven't had an opportunity to use it in the last fortnight anyway.

Cathal and myself headed down to the Bridges of Ross last Saturday for a spot of seawatching, about 12 hours of it in fact. We arrived about 40 minutes late for a very close in Fea's Petrel which was a bit of bummer but that's what you get for not arriving first thing in the morning. Despite this disappointment we had a very productive seawatch with four different Wilson's Petrel, one of which I managed to pick up myself. Add to this 1 Blue Fulmar, 7 Cory's (one very close), 5 Great, 325 Sooty, 8 Balearic Shearwaters, 3 Leach's, c.1850 European Storm Petrels, 5 juv Long-tailed, 1 ad Pom, 29 Arctic, 25 Great Skuas, 12 Sabine's Gull and 2 Black Terns (thanks to Niall Keogh for keeping tabs on the tallies). The Storm Petrel passage was particularly impressive. I can't recall ever seeing such a large and consistent passage which continued all day. Only 20 maximum birders were on site during the day. The weather conditions haven't been as productive in the last week but most visiting birders probably aren't complaining too much with the backup of a Royal Tern. We didn't manage to see either the Solitary or Least Sandpiper which were on a nearby lough previously.

I've been doing all the regular wader sites out here in Connemara in recent weeks but so far I've just had two single Curlew Sandpipers and a juvenile Little Stint so far. I also had a very brief but very close Hobby out on Mweenish Island near Carna on Thursday. Probably more interesting on a Connemara front was a heard only Spotted Redshank at the same time. The only previous Connemara record that I can find is one at Clifden in September 1961! The species is only really regular at three or four sites in Galway. Also out on Mweenish was a colour ringed Ringed Plover originally ringed in Dena, Meaño (Pontevedra), Spain by the Shorebirds Monitoring Programme in Galicia on 19th September 2014. This was the first resighting of this individual.

I also had my two colour ringed Oystercatchers back in the very same spots in the last week also. The white and yellow rings on the Icelandic bird have somehow managed to overlap each other which makes reading them rather confusing from a distance. The Scottish bird's colour ring appears to have been slightly damaged/worn over the summer period also.

Icelandic ringed Oystercatcher, Ballyconneely Beach.

Scottish ringed Oystercatcher T90. Ring slightly damaged on the other side of the ring now.


I've also managed to read six colour ringed Sanderling in the last month or so. Details below.

G1WWWR - ringed at Sandgerði, SW Iceland on 10th May 2011. First seen at Omey Island on 4th August 2011. This bird has been seen every winter since and was back this autumn on 2nd August 2016.

G3BBGY - ringed at Sandgerði, SW Iceland on 22nd May 2016. Seen on 2nd & 9th August 2016 at Omey Island, Galway.

W1YBRY - ringed at Ostgronland, Eastern Greenland on 22nd June 2016. Seen on the North Inishkea island, Co. Mayo, 5th August 2016. This bird was fitted with a geo-locator, hopefully it will be recovered next summer to retrieve the data showing it's migration route and strategy.

B3BBYR - ringed at Ostgronland, Eastern Greenland on 11th July 2011. Seen in Achill Sound, Mayo on 10th August 2014. Back on the breeding site in Eastern Greenland again on 3rd July 2015. Seen by myself near Lough Baun, Mayo on 26th July 2016.

G3WYRB - ringed at Sandgerði, SW Iceland on 17th May 2016. Seen by myself near Lough Baun, Mayo on 26th July 2016.

NB00707 - ringed on Sandy island, Orkney, Scotland on 21st May 2016. Seen by myself near Lough Baun, Mayo on 26th July 2016. Presuming this bird pushed north and bred in the Arctic in this short period, it just goes to show how little time is spent on the breeding grounds by the species.

W1YBRY with geolocator on the left tibia.

While wader hunting yesterday I was delighted to read another two juvenile Sandwich Tern rings at Inishdawros at the exact spot that the Hudsonian Godwit was last year. Both birds are Tony Murray's birds from Lady's Island Lake, Co. Wexford. K3Z was ringed on 17th June 2016 and seen on site subsequently on 11th, 12th and 13th July, K2V was ringed on 4th July 2016. I heard Niall Keogh had another of Tony's bird while twitching the Royal Tern in Kerry recently and Eoin McGreal had another unread ring near Lough Baun two weeks back also.

K3Z white darvic.

K2V green darvic.

Juvenile/first-winter Sandwich Tern. A very advanced bird which also had a metal ring on the right tibia.

Inishdawros

Sunset at Coral Beach yesterday evening.

 

Colour-ringed Oystercatchers

Continuing on the colour ringing theme I've also had two different colour-ringed Oystercatchers locally recently.

The first was initially seen on 14th January of this year while undertaking a NEWS count at Rossadillask near Cleggan. It took two further attempts to read the coded yellow ring. The bird was rather wary and usually wouldn't allow close approach. I finally managed to read the ring on 10th February. Looking through the European Colour Ring Birding site the only scheme listed as having a single coded yellow ring was a Russian project. I received no response from the organiser so I had to dig further. I just happened to see on Adam McClure's blog that he had a Oystercatcher with the same type of ring which had been ringed in Scotland.
http://bhgullsni.blogspot.ie/2015/10/oystercatcher-yellow-t64.html
This bird could have very easily have gone unreported as it does not show up in the search criteria on the ECRB website After emailing a few people I eventually got a very grateful response (below) from Harry Scott of the Grampian Ringing Group. If anyone ever comes across a similar colour ringed Oystercatcher Harry can be contacted at picades@ifb.co.uk
As it happens T90 was ringed only 17km or so away from where the colour-ringed Curlew originated from, both within the Cairngorms National Park!

"T90 (Ring No; FH57831) was initially ringed as an adult near Ballater (about 45 miles west of Aberdeen, Scotland) on 29th March 2014. Later that year it was re-sighted twice in a local glen paired up but not noted to have successfully bred. During spring 2015 it was sighted returning to our spring roost site near Ballater where it was seen on 7 occasions between 14th-31st March 2015, then it was last seen on 18th April 2015 in the same local glen as the previous summer where it was hanging around with a pre-breeding flock of 30+ Oyks.

Our efforts to ring and follow our Spring roosting Oystercatchers here in mid-Deeside have been going on for around 10yrs now and to date, after many years of metal ringing these passage Oystercatchers, all the recoveries we've received (c. 5 returns over 6yrs) had shown the birds wintering in the north-west of Wales (see map below).

However, at the March 2014 catch we applied the yellow inscribed Darvic rings for the first time on 82 birds. We also dyed several parts of them yellow in our effort to ascertain where the birds at our spring roost disperse to breed – it turns out that so far all sightings of these birds breeding are from the surrounding glens here in mid-Deeside. 

Since applying darvic rings in 2014 we've been getting a lot more recoveries and they are from a wider variety of locations such as Edinburgh, Devon and I think that's now 6 birds sighted in various parts of Ireland - it will be interesting to see if any more of our yellow Darvic birds get seen in Ireland?

Anyway, many thanks once again for taking the time to report this bird, it makes all our efforts when ringing them worthwhile. If you happened to get any further sightings of this bird or other darvic'd Oystercatchers would be gratefully received too, so please spread the word amongst your birding friends as there's obviously quite a few of our birds wintering around your coastline?"

T90 Oystercatcher, Rossadillask, Cleggan, Co. Galway, 10th February 2016.

T90 Oystercatcher, Rossadillask, Cleggan, Co. Galway, 10th February 2016.

T90 Oystercatcher, River Dee, Ballater, Scotland, 25th March 2015, © Harry Scott (Grampian Ringing Group).

Ringing, dyeing and applying the Darvic rings, © Harry Scott (Grampian Ringing Group)

Canon netting Oystercachers, 82 birds ringed, © Harry Scott (Grampian Ringing Group)

© Harry Scott (Grampian Ringing Group)

My second colour-ringed Oystercatcher was seen at the beach in front of Murlach down at Ballyconneely on 5th and 11th February. This was also a less than straightforward bird as the combination of rings yet again didn't match anything on the European Colour Ring Birding site. Paul Troake suggested that it may have been an Icelandic bird with a missing flag. Apparently several flags from this project have fallen off despite the ringers gluing and melting the ends together. It looks like it has lost a green flag on the right tibia.
It was ringed as it was incubating eggs at Ölfus, Grænhóll, Iceland (just east of Reykjavik) on 12th June 2015 by Veronica Mendez Aragonf. Thanks to Böddi Þórisson of the for the info.

Oystercatcher, Ballyconneely, 5th February 2016.

Oystercatcher, Ballyconneely, 5th February 2016.

Oystercatcher, Ballyconneely, 5th February 2016.

Journey of 1330km from Iceland to Ireland.

Seabird Survey 2015

Its been a hectic few weeks here lately with a lot of survey work. I haven't taken a huge amount of photos for the last month or more now. We spent three full days out on the RHIB last week doing seabird surveys. We managed to cover Duvillaun, Clare Island, Caher Island, Inishdalla and Mweelaun Island in Co. Mayo and Davillaun and Inishark with a brief stop-off at High Island in Co. Galway. Thankfully we finally managed to get the first decent spell of settled weather here this year just in the nick of time for the boat work. Clare Island held large numbers of Guillemots, Razorbills, Kittiwakes, Fulmars and a Gannet colony that is rapidly growing in size. The cliffs here are vast and at their highest reach around the 400 metre , 1,300 feet mark.

Another highlight was Caher Island which is well known for its seventh century early Christian monastery. There are still plenty of craved stone crosses on the island. An annual pilgrimage to the island by local people takes place on 15th August of each year. There were good numbers of Arctic Terns on Inishdalla also totalling around 300 individuals along with a single Little Tern.

Gannet colony on Clare Island.

Gannet colony on Clare Island.

Common Guillemots and Razorbill colony, Clare Island.

Common Guillemots and Razorbill colony, Clare Island.

Oystercatcher, Caher Island.

Oystercatcher, Caher Island.

Rock Pipit, Caher Island.

Sea stack Clare Island

The transport with Eoin and Aonghus.

Stone cross Caher Island



Stone crosses  Caher Island

Stone cross Caher Island

Stone cross Caher Island

Not exactly sure what this item is/was but it was inside the old church on the altar. This offering of money must surely be an old Celtic pagan tradition that was incorporated into the Christian religion like many other "Irish Christian traditions".