Wet wet wet

The forecast looked decent last night for East Kent - northeasterly winds with rain overnight. Though the rain persisted, we got wet and the birds decided to keep hiding. Starting off at dawn at King George V memorial park in Ramsgate, trying to re-live the Bluetail dream 4 years ago but with, predictably, no result bar a Chiffchaff and a few crests. Punctuated by a breakfast stop to shelter from the lousy weather, it was the same story at Northdown Park and Shuart too, with a similar line up of species though quite a few thrushes were passing through.

Wanting to get something out of the day, we headed back west towards Faversham and with the rain intensifying, thought we'd played another poor move. However, after a brief wait we got back out into the elements and hot footed it along the seawall from the Sportman's pub at Seasalter. There was a Wheatear looking pretty bedraggled, and loads of Dark-bellied Brents on the mud - good to see them back in force including several juveniles. And a mile or so on, I picked out the adult Red-breasted Goose feeding close in with the flock. Best views I've had of this species in the UK (a wild one at least), though it seemed not to be greatly appreciated by the accompanying Brents, which behaved agressively towards it (just look at the middle image above!).

School's out Friday. Bring on the Azores.

Med Gull - Polish origin traced

A couple of weeks ago on 7th October, I saw this adult Med Gull in the ASDA car park off Bugsby's Way, North Greenwich, London: -

PJN0 was ringed as a nestling in Western Poland on 21st June 2009 at Zb. Nyski, Wojcice, OPolskie - 749 miles straight line distance from Greenwich.

It was seen again at its birth site on 27th May 2011, as a second-summer, but hadn't been seen since. It's always fascinating tracking indvidual birds, and you get a lot of info from colour-ringing gulls compared to a lot of other ringing schemes. I'll be interested to see whether this bird lingers around Greenwich for the winter, or whether it has already headed off (I couldn't find it this weekend in a couple of brief looks). And also, will it be back to breed in the colony of its birth next summer?

Thanks to Adam Bassett for his assistance, as well as the Polish Bird Ringing Scheme.

Yellow-legged Gulls in the hand

An early start, and back into the routine of visiting Pitsea landfill site to get some close gull action. Today started off worryingly, with news that there's a DEFRA directive of no food waste on landfill sites - with little of the 'good stuff for gulls' now coming to the main tip. Fortunately, some moist stuff does still get in with the dry waste so the gulls were out in force. So much so that we were on the tip from 7am til 4pm, which meant 3 catches - a massive 569 gulls ringed in total, including 3 Yellow-legged Gulls (all colour-ringed) with just a small selection of the shots that I took of these three birds here: -
Adult (colour-ringed YJ4T)

Adult (colour-ringed YJ5T)

2nd-winter (colour-ringed YJ6T)

395 Herring Gulls were processed, of which I ringed a few...

Also, be on the lookout for colour-ringed Black-headed Gulls - 52 birds with yellow rings starting 2A followed by another two letters were processed today.

On the way out, there was a nice showy fox that didn't seem too bothered with me papping it as it devoured Hawky's leftover sandwiches.

A Polish immigrant

I'd meant to do this post earlier this evening, but running the Azores Bird Sightings website seems to have taken over my life at the moment. Looking on enviously with what is going on over there - it's still a distant 3 weeks til I go - the London offering is pretty sobering. But, within the few miles of my flat, there is always birding potential along the River Thames.

Having got back from Ireland early afternoon yesterday, I headed out for a spot of late lunch with Karen in Greenwich. Once this was finished, while driving along the road in North Greenwich, I spotted an adult Med Gull over an Asda car park with a few Black-headed Gulls - still a notable bird in London. As it was within a mile or so of where I'd seen last week's Polish ringed bird, it wasn't surprising that it was indeed this bad boy again - and still yet to hear from the ringers, it is definitely Polish, as the bottom photo here allows you to read the ring inscription as being from Gdansk. I had to open the £1.69 loaf of bread we'd just purchased to lure it in, much to Karen's annoyance as she felt it wasted on a Polish gull. But this Med Gull, PJN0, had expensive taste.

Also, a male Black Redstart still just chilling on the Greenwich peninsular. Sometimes a bit of relaxed local stuff is a nice anecdote from the manic nature of hardcore British and Irish listing.

A tale of two kings

Shattered after one of those autumn pulse periods that won't be forgotten in a hurry. Hugh Delaney has blindly kept faith with Inishmore, County Galway, for years and years and having found a Myrtle Warbler a couple of years ago, he stepped it up to the max by finding the WP's first Eastern Kingbird on Friday. It doesn't get any bigger than that, so flights booked and ferry sorted, it was looking promising for the weekend... especially with some vague news of a Belted Kingfisher also in County Galway (I'd missed the 2005 bird as I was abroad).

So meeting up with Jerry, Dave, Bob and Lee G in the early hours at Stansted, and after a technical fault that delayed us for half an hour or so, we were on our way to Shannon... or so we thought. As we descended into Shannon, it was a complete pea souper and after an aborted landing and a fair amount of circling we were told we had to divert and land in Dublin! Not good, though news already filtered through whilst airborne that the Kingbird hadn't been seen so the pressure was off a little. However, for me and Lee G, the Belted K had firmed up, so there was still some urgency and a plan was hatched for our arrival in Dublin.

We legged it through the airport, and treating good old Ryanair's offer of a courtesy bus to Shannon with the contempt it deserved, hired a car and screamed across the country arriving in beautiful Connemara, Galway within three hours. With still no sign of the Kingbird (having obviously departed), focus on the BK was the target but we arrived at Lough Fee 20 minutes after it had flown off high south towards Kylemore. Josh, PAC and Peggers had then seen it from the road flying towards Kylemore Abbey so the chase was on for a nervous couple of hours until, bang, Jim L located it sitting unobtrusively in low branches on the small lake west of the abbey.



The staff here were absolutely blinding, waivering the 12.50 euro entrance fee for us so long as some photos get sent their way of this rare visitor. Anyway, I watched the bird for over an hour until just shy of 4pm when having had a couple of pops at fishing and calling a couple of times, it headed back east. And that was the last sighting of the bird, at least up until as I write this.

Kylemore Abbey, Connemara, Galway - a fantastically scenic site made even better by the presence of the BK

We managed to get back to Shannon for a decent time, booking a hotel, have a decent Chinese washed down by a couple of pints of the black stuff whilst watching the video of the Long-toed Stint video too at Weirwood. A crying shame the Kingbird wasn't around, but for someone who has seen a fair few birds, getting a BOU/IRBC tick out of the weekend was unreal as I'd have gone for the BK alone of course. Every cloud has a silver lining.

No pot of gold at the end, but an impressive rainbow(s) with Connemara as the backdrop

Back in southeast London

After all the travels recently, it was nice to actually be able to spend the morning trawling through the usuals in Rotherhithe and slightly further afield in southeast London. Loads of Black-headed Gulls on the river, and Common Gulls have returned in numbers. Just a couple of miles further east in Greenwich, the quality was upped somewhat. A couple of Black Redstarts were mooching about an area of derelict land, with a male showing particularly well pecking about, rather unperturbed by my presence.

I also found a nice adult Mediterranean Gull on the Thames by the Anchor & Hope pub late morning, and after showing well for a bit on the water it flew onto the nearby barges showing off what appears to be Polish bling. Before I headed off home, I had a good chat to a couple of Charlton fans looking forward to their game against a Keen-less Blackburn just a few hundred yards away.

PJN0 - research suggests a Polish origin

All quiet on the western front

What does a picture like this conjure up to you?

Well, in short, no birds and a load of shenanigans. In fact hay bales wrapped ingeniously by Legoman faces in County Kerry were the find of the trip. With an easterly blow and no new fronts coming in from the Atlantic since the weekend before, Josh J and I knew this trip the weekend just gone would be a quiet one. But you've got to try, and that's what we did. Saturday was spent in west Cork, checking the estuaries around Clonakilty, Rosscarbery and Timoleague with loads of common birds seen as well as a decent looking Azorean Gull candidate that has been lingering the area for the past month or so.

Wanting to see at least one yank this weekend, we headed to Garretstown beach where amongst the most selfish, insolent and obnoxious dog walkers that I've ever had the discourtesy to encounter, was a nice juvenile Semipalmated Sandpiper. This bird was what I'd call a 'typical' individual so compare it with the recent Western/Semi-p on the Wirral. I think structurally there's not too much wrong with the comparison, and that's one reason I've always been in the Semi-p camp on that bird. Back in the day, juvenile Western Sandpipers were easy to identify weren't they??!!

Anyway a group of people and their three dogs, that could see Josh and I watching birds on the beach, walked straight pass us flushing the waders, and then got an absolute ear bashing from me that involved several necessary and unnecessary. So much so that, before any garda incident evolved with the next potential incident, we departed to the tranquility of further west. And quietness is what we got - nothing else of note seen for the rest of the day at places like Ballydehob, Bantry, Castletown Bearhaven, Derrynane and Ballinskelligs. The Sunday proved as eventless, although a couple of hours at an elusive Reed Warbler on Valentia Island proved frustrating while Carrahane was as poor as it can possibly be in late September. Some lovely looking passerine habitat found though, and certainly worth bashing soon after a deep low hits in October.

habitat on Valentia Island

Whatever the weather and lack of birds this time around, Irish weekends are always a nice time so at least for the foreseeable future that's it, and back to stuff this side of the Irish Sea from now on. Unless those lows come bouncing in again...