How many times have you heard it
said, “work gets in the way of birding” or “a bad days birding is
better than a good days work”. All
true, but if it was not for my job and my work, I would never have come
upon this Lesser Kestrel on the west coast of Clare.
Since October, the company I am
employed by have been contracted for eight days fieldwork a month, in and
around the Kilkee area of west Clare. As I live in the county and have years of
bird knowledge built up of this region, I was sent to cover these sites as part
of my work. Every day on my lunchbreak, I head to Kilkee to have my coffee and
sandwich. This gives me the chance to do a small bit of birding. I have
developed a routine, which I stick to rigidly, around the horseshoe bay in the
middle of town and outlying coastal cliffs.
On Monday the 9th
November as I was almost finishing my lunch and routine, along a coastal loop
drive just south of Kilkee, I noticed an adult Raven basking on a sunny
embankment. This looked like a perfect
photographic opportunity. I drove down
the 100m to the car park at Dunlickey Castle, where this bird was sitting. I
was hoping to use my van as a hide to get shots of this Raven, and as I
approached the bird it was giving out to a Kestrel sitting on a pole
nearby. Needless-to-say, the Raven flew
off within seconds of my arrival, to my disgust, leaving the Kestrel sitting on
the pole.
I then concentrated my camera on
this Kestrel. The bird didn’t seem to be bothered by my presence and was tame
at times. As I snapped off a couple of shots the bird flew from the pole down
to an exposed earthen bank. Once on the
ground the bird began to dig out worms and started chewing them on the grass
close by. I kept shooting and when the
bird was finished eating the worm, it flew across the car park to sit on a
tourist display board. I moved the car to get into a better position to
continue photographing the Kestrel. It
was only at this point, as it sat in the sunshine, that I noticed the colour of
the toes. The toes stood out against the
rusty edge of the frame of the sign and I could see they were not the normal
black claws, that would be found on a Common Kestrel. The head of the bird and overall appearance
was pale. I found this unusual as I had
not seen a Common Kestrel this pale ever.
The bird then started jumping from the sign to the ground catching more
worms and eating them on the deck. It
started to become a little livelier chasing insects and worms on the tarmac of
the car park, before flying back up to the pole again. I spent more time shooting off lots of photos
and even got some small bits of video footage.
Now I could see that the wings were longer, the tail had grey
colouration to the upper-parts, and I put it down to be a young male Kestrel.
After about 15-20 minutes the bird flew off north along the nearby cliffs and
out of sight.
I left the area and headed back
to work wondering was the bird I just encountered a pale Common Kestrel or
what?
Once back at my place of work and
between showers of rain, I got a chance to take a closer look at the bird in
question on my camera. I knew that Lesser Kestrels had pale/yellow toes, as I
had seen hundreds in the past in Mediterranean countries. But I was also
cautious that the bird I had just observed could be a partially albino or a
leucistic type Common Kestrel, especially given the paleness around the head
with a small bit of warm fawn running through the feathers. Looking at spread
winged photos of the bird I just encountered, and measuring the wing, P10 looked the same length as P7, (as
outlined in some ID forums), which was perfect for Common KestreI. I was
confused given other features such as the toes and wing markings and length,
were closer to Lesser Kestrel rather than that of Common Kestrel.
I What’s App’d a few images to
Killian Mullarney of the toes etc. to get his expert opinion and advice. He
replied saying, “the claws on that Kestrel are remarkable! I have never seen
this in Common Kestrel. Would love to see the real shots, when you download
them, and I’m sure Dick Forsman would be interested too”. I forwarded more
images to Killian by What’s App after this text, but due to his workload and
child minding that afternoon, he did not get a chance to look at them till
later that night.
The rest of the afternoon I drove
myself insane, toing & froing as to which Kestrel species I had just been
watching. Work consumed me for the rest of the late afternoon, and I didn’t get
home till approximately 18.30 that evening. At about 19.40 before I even had a
chance to download the photos from my camera to the laptop, I got a text and a
phone call from Killian. He had just got
the chance to look at the series of photos I had sent earlier on in the day and
was extremely apologetic that he hadn’t got the chance to scrutinise them
properly. At this point he was very happy that the bird in west Clare was
indeed a Lesser Kestrel. During our
conversation he was happy to call this bird a Lesser Kestrel, but the decision
was made at this time to forward the shots to Dick Foresman immediately for
further confirmation. Dick replied
before 20.15 stating that no doubt whatsoever that it was a Lesser Kestrel.
To my delight and disgust at the
same time, I thought I had a first Irish record. But I was soon set straight.
There had been one previous record of a male Lesser Kestrel 130 years
previously, within a day to the month of this bird near Kilkee. One male was at
Glenamuck, south Dublin from 8th to 10th November 1890
and remained over the winter feeding on ploughed fields before being shot on 17th
February 1891. A sad end to such a fantastic looking bird. Hopefully the west
Clare bird won’t come to such an ending.
Unfortunately, it was not seen again after this date despite extensive
searches by local birders over that week.
I now look forward to going to work every day, no matter how hard it
seems getting out of the bed in the morning.
I would like to thank Killian
Mullarney and Dick Foresman for their help with this bird and also my employers
Malachy Walsh & Partners.
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