Spring/early Summer 2016 pics

Just a roundup of a few random shots from the last few months. I didn't taken a huge amount of photographs between April to June.

Second calendar Glaucous Gull

Second calendar Glaucous Gull

Third-calendar/second-summer Ring-billed Gull

Mistle Thrush

Male Siskin

Second-calendar male Common Crossbill

Adult female Common Crossbill, relatively narrow billed.

Helicopter with Bambi Bucket collecting water.

Helicopter with empty Bambi Bucket.

Eurasian Skylark

Migrating Lesser Black-backed Gulls, probably on their way up to Iceland.

Common Sandpiper, quite a common breeder in Connemara.

Black Guillemot

Common Guillemots

Gate submerged in cobbles.

Stone causeway near Screebe.

Inishbofin 18th April 2014

I got the evening ferry out to Inishbofin on Thursday evening to get a full day out there the following day. The first ferry doesn't arrive out until 12 o'clock and leaves again at 5 so trying to get anything done out there is always done in a rush. I managed to get to most of the spots I had hoped to, it was around an 18km round walk, two sore feet by the end of the day! The sea cliffs are the real attraction for me at this time of year on Inishbofin. Two of the three Raven nests were successful with two and three large chicks respectively. This is a little on the low side as the average clutch size of chicks this year was around four chicks. The female Peregrine was also around but doesn't appear to have laid eggs yet which she really should have by now. The Peregrines here never seem to be very successful for some reason. It certainly can't be the lack of food so it's hard to know why? I also had probably three nesting pairs of Chough around the island, even managed to see part of one of the pairs nest wedged into a crack in a cliff.
There was a Black-throated Diver giving good views with around 20 Great northern Divers off the sandy beach at Westquarter. I  think this is the first proper island record for this species. Anthony McGeehan has seen one from the ferry in the past though. Also in the same area were two female Merlin which were seen interacting with each other. One actually called as it flew over me. These are presumably migrants, possibly Iceland bound? Males which are always first on the breeding grounds (that is if they ever leave) should be on territory for a month at this stage. Quiet on the migrant front 3 Chiffchaffs, 1 Blackcap and a few Wheatears including one female Greenland type.

Fulmar

Fulmar

House Sparrow

House Sparrow

Rock Pipit collecting nest material. Note the pink flush to the throat and the sparse underpart streaking which are features of littoralis Scandinavian Rock Pipit. However it did lack a noticeable whitish supercillium.

Rock Pipit. This shot was taken in the rain so the exposure is a bit off but again note the pink coloration to the breast, bluish tones to the head, sparse underpart streaking and white supercillium. This would probably be called littoralis by some. This bird seemed to be paired up with another much more typical looking petrosus Rock Pipit, so is this natural variation amongst the local population or what??

Skylark

Shag nesting on sea stack.

Sanderling moulting some of the wing feather tracts into summer plumage.

Typical looking local female Wheatear

Female Wheatear, most likely the leucorhoa Greenland race, note the colour tone difference between the two.

Three male Wheatears, probably migrant birds. All three fairly typical looking so probably not heading too far North.

Puffin and Razorbill skulls. The Puffin skull was a little mangled, I think the lower mandible has been twisted upside down. That's the upper mandible of the Puffin on the left which was detached.

Dead adult male Otter. Not sure what happened to this poor fella. Found in an isolated spot so certainly not a road casualty. It didn't appear to be a young animal as it was missing some front incisors and the canines were worn.

Front pad of the Otter.

 

Duach beach, some erosion here same as all sandy beaches on the West coast after the winter storms.

There used to be a lovely stone pier leading out the derelict fish curing station here, not anymore after the storms!

Prísún/The prison, an impressive blow-hole land bridge. The bigger rocks washed up by the sea probably weigh a few tonnes each.

Davillaun

Inishturk

 

Pied-billed Grebe and co.

Been a while since my last blog post. Busy few weeks since.
I managed to get down to the Bridges of Ross for a spot of seawatching on the weekend of 17th & 18th August. Excellent weekend with the undoubted highlight being two Fea's-type Petrels on the Saturday. The first bird which was picked up by Victor Caschera which gave good views. The second bird picked up by Keith Langdon gave briefer and more distant views. The other highlights were 697 Great Shearwaters, 25 Cory's Shearwaters, 6 Balearic Shearrwaters, 177 Sooty Shearwaters, 2 Blue Fulmars, 6 Pomarine Skuas, 30 Arctic Skuas, 22 Great Skuas and 20 Sabine's Gulls.
I also had a very good seawatch by Galway standards off Inishbofin on Monday 19th August with the following totals - 1 Cory's, 13 Great, 926 Sooties, 4 Balearic, c.3000 per hour Manx Shearwaters, 8 Great Skua's and 2 Sabine's Gulls. The Cory's was a long overdue county tick for myself. A lot of the shearwaters were feeding quite close in to the shoreline. The Great Shearwaters were the only birds that didn't stop off to feed. Interesting to see that only 128 Sooty Shearwaters were noted off the Bridges of Ross the same day. I think that the West coast of Galway may well be an important feeding area for quite a few seabirds as we have had 8000 Sooties feeding off Slyne Head over the course of a weekend in August 2011. Amazingly over the same period a grand total of just 41 passed the Bridges!

Skip forward to yesterday I was up in Mayo to check on a few wader spots in SW Mayo. Numbers of waders up there and here in Connemara have been quite low of late. Afterwards I headed up to Achill to twitch the Pied-billed Grebe. It proved to be very elusive and remained hidden for long periods in vegetation. It was first picked up on 14th May and hadn't been seen again until 27th August so it's feasible that it was there throughout the summer given it's skulky behaviour and the fact that the site rarely gets checked especially during the summer.

While down near Ballyconneely today I found a second-calendar male Surf Scoter. It had a reduced white forehead patch while the white nape patch was completely absent. Nearly all the Surfers I've seen have been females so it was nice to find a male on the local patch though not what I was expecting to find in early September. This is the most regular American duck I've seen out here now with three different individuals.

Colour ringed Little Egret at Kilcaimin, one of two present and both ringed very close-by.

I headed on up to Glenamaddy Turlough on Saturday on the off chance that the water levels might be low and thankfully my luck was in - oodles of mud! A real wader-fest with 1 Little Stint, 52 Dunlin, 150 Lapwing, 14 Ringed Plover, 6 Golden Plover, 8 Ruff, 133 Snipe (all out in the open), 21 Black-tailed Godwits, 20 Curlew, 1 Greenshank, plus 41 Grey Herons and 116 Little Grebes, not bad for a site 45km inland, I'll definitely be back before the Autumn is out.

Glenamaddy Turlough full of mud which is a rare sight Galway. 

Irish Hare