Back out on Achill

I spent the weekend with Rich Bonser out on Achill Island, Co Mayo - my first autumn visit here for three years. Overall it proved a quiet weekend and thus we were pretty pleased to find a juvenile Pectoral Sandpiper along the north shore of Lough Nambrack mid-morning on Sunday.

I first visited Achill back in September 2008 and left greatly impressed with the island, despite seeing little more than a trio of Curlew Sandpipers. September visits in 2010, 2011 and 2012 were all fruitful, the middle year being truly brilliant. While our fleeting visit this year was far from vintage, a lack of any meaningful weather and a general dearth of Nearctic shorebirds throughout Ireland meant that a Pec arguably wasn't all that bad a result.

In fact it was probably the best Pec I've ever seen. Although it was occasionally spooked by nearby Meadow Pipits, it was utterly fearless when on its own. You could lie on the lough shore and it would just meander its way by. Sometimes it passed less than a metre away, and you could actually hear the water splashing as it pattered by - just brilliant.

Juvenile Pectoral Sandpiper, Achill Island, 20 September 2015

South Coast Semi

First-winter Semipalmated Plover along Hayling seafront, 20th October

Not really a bird to poke a 400mm lens at, the closest we had it was about 25 metres. After hearing it call once at Black Point just before the entire flock flew off, we relocated the bird along the beach at Hayling seafront where it showed reasonably well in windy conditions. A subtle and challenging bird that showed the suite of features you'd want to see (though admittedly I couldn't see the semipalmations on the views I had), and a welcome grip-back just 75 miles from home - I never bothered attempting to see either last year's Hebridean bird or the Kerry bird of 2011.

My guess is that three in three years is just the beginning of a new-found regularity that will see British & Irish records occur much more frequently in the coming years, but only time will tell.

The stuff dreams were made of

Before I launch in to too much detail, I may as well just link to Rich Bonser's comprehensive summary of the weekend. It's not often you find yourself in the right place at the right time, but it couldn't have been much better for Rich and I on Friday night. Going through the motions as we embarked on the northward drive to County Mayo, our inane conversation was suddenly interrupted by Rich's phone signalling the arrival of a text message. One look from Rich and I knew shit had hit the fan - there was swearing, gesticulating as he threw his phone at me, and the car was turned around just south of Gort instantaneously. This had to be good. And it was - MEGA Cork WILSON'S WARBLER Dursey Island. Fuck a duck!

Despite plenty of logistics-based tension and stress early on, the day ended up running very smoothly. Foggy overnight conditions had kept the bird in place, though we only found this out just as we were getting on the third cable car of the morning. As such I was the first visiting Brit to clap eyes on this little yellow critter:

Wilson's Warbler (thanks to Bo for the pic)

Initially very elusive, it finally showed with some regularity from early afternoon once we'd sussed out the circuit it was feeding on. Nevertheless viewed were invariably obscured and brief, despite being at close range.

Back off the island for mid-afternoon, we headed up to the Iveragh Peninsula where the best we could do was a juvenile Curlew Sand with 18 Dunlin on the Derrynane Estuary. This site has never had a Nearctic wader - take a look at its position on a map and judge for yourself how ridiculous that is...

We ended up in Dingle where a couple of Guinness and fish and chips were the order of the day before bedding down in the scandalously cheap Smerwick Harbour Hotel (15 euro each including breakfast). Next morning saw us scoring a couple of showy Nearctic waders either side of breakfast - one of the Smerwick Pec Sands (until flushed by a pesky cow!) and the Ventry Baird's. First up was the Pec before breakfast:

And then, after a full Irish, over for the Baird's:

Before returning to the Pec to try and pap it in sunlight. We could have done so much better had it not been for the interfering bovine.

With news of the Elegant-type Tern forthcoming from Beale, we headed up there and enjoyed some decent views of it on the beach. Nice tern, big decurved conk with a rich orange base paling to yellowish at the tip - not the longest bill for elegans but within range. As Rich said, "it just looks like an Elegant Tern". I'll take that from someone who's seen them in CA, but who knows what's going on with these W European birds. Unfortunately, before we could get closer, it decided to bomb out in to the Shannon Estuary to feed, but did let us see its white rump and dark secondaries. Nice.

After being told that the Kilkee American Golden Plover was one of those that you could walk up to, we decided to end the weekend there. A quick crossing on the Tarbert ferry saw us in Kilkee for not long after 16:00, though the sunny afternoon had generated quite a lot of activity on the beach and there was no sign of the plover. Rich later picked it up on offshore rocks at several hundred metres' range where, despite the attentions of a dog Otter, it remained until we had to leave. That meant no crippling shots, by the way.

So, another fabulous weekend out west. You never fail to see something good on these trips and, despite not getting much proper birding/bird finding done, we saw some great birds. That Pied-billed Grebe will have to wait for my Achill list...

American Golden Plover

Rich, John and I were fortunate to stumble across this newly-arrived juvenile American Golden Plover on Keel golf course, Achill Island on Saturday 15th. It's a particularly fresh individual, with smart golden upperparts - definitely the brightest individual I've seen.

I think it rates as one of the best birds I've ever seen in Britain & Ireland. Sure, it's 'only' an AGP, but is there anything better in birding than sitting in some far-flung destination watching a transatlantic vagrant at a range of five metres with your mates?! It's the fourth American Goldie that I've been involved in the finding of, the last of which was on the very same golf course - in fact, we found the 2011 bird just 50 metres from this latest individual!

Achill Island 2012, round one

The weekend has passed, and I've just enjoyed another great couple of days in County Mayo with John Archer and Rich Bonser. As always, we concentrated on the magnificent Achill Island - a wild and spectacular outpost in westernmost Ireland that must be an imposing (though attractive!) sight for Nearctic birds arriving in off the Atlantic. Over the past couple of autumns, I've been fortunate to find nine individuals of five Nearctic species on the island. With one eye on the remnants of Hurricane Leslie tracking northwards towards Iceland and the north of Scotland, the aim was to try and add to that tally.

Add to it we did. Bird of the weekend was a fine juvenile American Golden Plover on the golf course at Keel, which had evidently just arrived mid-morning on Saturday 15th and kept close to a European Goldie that was already present. On our first walk of the golf course hadn't revealed this bird and, with the addition of a flyover Pec Sand on the Sunday morning, illustrates why checking and re-checking sites in the west is crucial to finding birds. The plover was so good that it deserved its own post...

AGP + JJ

The Pec was one of two heard-only individuals over the weekend; the other was a single observer record for yours truly at Corragaun Lough which I could hear flying around as I crossed over the the channel - hands full of shoes and optics and water over the knee didn't help in the bid to see it. A Jack Snipe at Corragaun Lough on Sunday was a welcome Irish tick.

Nearctic waders are obviously great, but the find of the weekend goes to the juvenile Black-necked Grebe we picked up at Lough Doo on Saturday morning. This is a real mega out west; who knows where it has come from. We didn't see it Sunday but it was apparently still there.

Lough Doo Monster

The brief summary above has painted something of a rosy picture of the weekend. Don't get me wrong, I loved it - particularly watching the AGP in the glorious light of Saturday. But, it was hard work this year. Wader-watching in County Mayo is not for the faint-hearted. Last year's trip was exceptional; this year was much more typical! Furthermore, wader numbers seem poor this year - we had Dunlin at just a handful of the sites (Corragaun/Achill Sound/Roonagh), when in normal years they are at most sites. Although you don't necessarily need Palearctic waders to bring in the rares, it does help to concentrate them.

Thanks to Rich and John for a great weekend of company, and it was great to meet Nick Watmough on the Saturday as well as Achill semi-resident Michael O'Brien. Cheers guys.