Epic sea-watches part 2

A slightly last minute decision and plan sprung into action when the weather forecast looked good for seawatching off the bridges of Ross, Co. Clare yesterday. Thanks to Brian Mccloskey for the heads up that this could be another epic Seawatch! He wasn’t wrong! I arranged to pick up Joe Proudfoot at around 2am in Dublin and then make our way across to Clare for dawn or so. We arrived early days, with the light only beginning to break through the dense cloud. On arrival we met a small group of birder already set up and ready for the action. Our good pals Brian Mccloskey and Niall Keogh sat among the group. The group were getting views of quite a number of different Wilson’s storm petrels just as we arrived, excellent timing on our behalf! And we all managed to see several of these beautiful and elegant creatures throughout the morning and then also in the evening. The skua passage then began to heat up, with 29 Pomarine seen throughout the day (I didn’t see them all, but got on quite a good few). Great and Cory’s shearwater began to appear as the morning went on as did bigger numbers of sooty shears. After taking a bit of a breather and having a chat with some of the lads, I looked back in my scope to begin to search again. And to my absolute amazement I had a full frame view of a long darkish under-winged bird banking among the Manx stream. I knew what this was straight away and shouted to the group “I think I have a Fea’s” seconds after, Niall Keogh said Fea’s off the point close in and heading west. 8 of the 9 birders there at the time managed great views of the bird was it drifted west with the manx stream!! A full fat lifer for me and a finds tick of course also! I was shacking with the excitement of just finding this rare bird and managing some quite decent phonescoped video footage. Brian Mccloskey also got some excellent footage as the bird passed. The shape and colourations of the bird are unmistakable, especially at quite close range. One of my favourite moments on a seawatch I’ve had to date. What a day this was following on from seeing, Little shearwater and South Polar Skua on Saturday last!!! See Brian’s excellent write up here on the day: https://www.facebook.com/share/yFvLVsqQDuPVvrqS/?mibextid=WC7FNe

fea's/Desertas type Petrel.. Pale phase Pomarine and dark phase Arctic skuas and some people pics, me, Brian Mccloskey and Joe Proudfoot...Oh yeah and two superb Chough!! .

Later in the morning a couple of Sabine’s gulls filtered through, these are one of my favourite birds and I ended up seeing at least 4 of the 7 birds that passed. Smaller numbers of artic skua passed throughout the day also. And 2 great skua (bonxie). I arrived back from a quick visit to the shop and asked Brian had there been much since I had left, he said we are watching 2 Long-tailed skua’s! They are one of my favourite seabirds so I quickly set up my scope and got onto an adult and immature (2nd calendar year) followed closely by 3 more, an adult, 2nd and 3rd calendar year, amazing to catch these! I then picked up a blue phase fulmar which gave a decent view for the group! Another memorable seawatch that will live long in the memory!!