Richard's Pipit

This Richard's Pipit was found in an undisclosed site in Limerick County today by Davey Farrar. It is a first county record and an excellent winter find of this eastern European vagrant. Here are a few distant shots.

Richard's Pipit John N Murphy

Lesser Kestrel

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 9^th 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 8^th to 10^th November 1890 and remained over the winter feeding on ploughed fields before being shot on 17^th 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.

Lesser Kestrel at Kilkee John N Murphy

Pectoral Sandpiper

I was in Tacumshin, Wexford on Monday and caught up with one of the two Trans Atlantic vagrant Pectoral Sandpipers, that have been lingering on a small flash flood south of the main lake.  Here are a couple of images of one of the birds which was fairly tame.

 

 Pectoral Sandpiper at Tacumcshin © John N Murphy

 

Brown Booby RIP

On Monday 13th July 2020, as I was departing a work site near Bellmullet in Mayo, news broke that there was a Brown Booby sitting on Greystones Beach in County Wicklow.  As home was a 3 hour drive away and also Greystones the same distance I was torn between the long trip home or the detour to Wicklow.  Obviously from the shots below you can guess which direction I headed towards.  After the 3 hour dash and on arrival into Greystones Harbour I was met with the news from the large gathering of birders that the bird was gone missing for over half an hour. Eventually the bird was relocated on the north wall of the harbour and the following series of shots were gained.  By Wednesday the bird had been taken into captivity in a poor state and died by the end of the week.  This was the 4th record of Brown Booby in Ireland with the three previous records of one dead on Inchydoney beach in Cork, one off a Spanish fishing vessel in Kerry and one the same day as this bird on a cargo boat off the south west.  Looking forward to finding one in Clare and hopefully it will live a little longer that this one did.

 Brown Booby Greystones John N Murphy

 

Pacific Golden Plover a first for Clare

I went to Doonbeg in west Clare today to look for the American Golden Plover that Geoff Pearson found there yesterday. To all our surprise it turned out to be a Pacific Golden Plover and a first record of this rare North American wader to the county. 

 

Pacific Golden Plover at Doonbeg Bay John N Murphy

Common Cuckoo

During the Covid-19 lockdown and with all the fine weather it seems to have been a great early summer with Common Cuckoo abundant throughout the country. Here are a few shots of a male that spent a lot of time flying from pole to pole calling and picking up large caterpillars in the vegetation below.

 

Adult male Cuckoo © John N Murphy

 

 

Crossbills

There is much Crossbill activity out there at the moment.  I observed a family party of five during the week with three freshly hatched young chicks. All Crossbills in the country are being scrutinised now since Allan Mee found the Two-barred Crossbill in Limerick a couple of weeks back.  It is surprising that we don't have more records of this rare Siberian visitor to Ireland.  For now we will just have to keep looking and enjoy these superb birds.

 

Male & female Common (Red) Crossbills John N Murphy

Male Siskin John N Murphy