Dermot Breen's Blog: Kumlien's gull

Showing posts with label Kumlien's gull. Show all posts

Saturday, 17 February 2018

2018 White-wingers

A selection of shots of several individual Iceland, Kumlien's and Glaucous Gulls that I've encountered in the last month and a half in Galway. It seems to be a rather good winter for white-wingers after a few recent duff winter.
Another American Herring Gull would be greatly appreciated. The last AHG found in Galway was a first-winter found in January 2008 while the returning adult bird was last seen in February 2011. There have only been six records for Galway, half of which were recorded during the 1990's. It's a little perplexing as to how few records there are for Galway (compared to Cork or Kerry) considering the amount of gull watching that has taken place here especially in the two or three decades. There was a nice smart first-winter recently seen at Cashen in county Kerry, hopefully we might get another here some time soon..

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Nimmo's Pier, 14th January 2018.

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 22nd January 2018. Same individual taken into care and released at Nimmo's Pier three weeks later.

Second-calendar Iceland Gull, Ardmore Bay, 16th February 2018.

Third-calendar Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 16th January 2018.

Adult Iceland Gull, Bunowen Pier, 31st January 2018.

Adult Kumlien's Gull, Omey Island, 15th January 2018.

Second-calendar Glaucous Gull, Bunowen Pier, 22nd January 2018.

Second-calendar Glaucous Gull, Bunowen Pier, 31st January 2018.

Monday, 1 January 2018

Adult Kumlien's Gull Omey Island

New Years resolution - must blog a bit more regularly! The old blog postings have slipped a small bit especially in the latter half of 2017. To remedy this here a few shots of an apparent adult Kumlien's Gull that I had on Omey Island on 20th December. I first had it on the east side of the strand and latter had it on the rocks in the small bay just west of Fahy Lough. A reasonably pale adult. It's tempting to speculate if this actually the same bird that I had here in January/February 2016 as a second-winter?
http://dermotbreen.blogspot.ie/2016/01/omey-kumliens-and-news.html
However this bird doesn't show any signs of immaturity which one would expect for a fourth-winter. This has been my one and only "white-winger" of the winter so far, fingers crossed for a few more along with a Connemara Ross's or Ivory?

I also had a flock of at least seventeen Twite on the island, my first time seeing them on Omey. Again I would love to know where these birds are coming from, I'd doubt if they are Irish. One wintering Chiffchaff also seen in a tiny reedbed on the island.

Adult Kumlien's Gull, Omey Island, 20th December 2017.

Sunday, 29 January 2017

Kumlien's Gull 26.1.17

I first found this lovely looking first-winter Kumlien's Gull in Rossaveel Harbour last Monday evening. The light was rapidly fading which meant for some extremely poor photography conditions. Even in the poor conditions it looked like an impressive gull. My first views of it was of sitting on top of the fish processing factory and it was face onto me. The gorgeous near solid dark velvet chocolate brown coloration on the head and breast gave off a distinct New World odour, almost smiths-like. I returned two days later to try for better shots. It was in the very same spot and quickly came into bread. The wind was near gale force on the day which along with my position made it very difficult to get good open wing shots and the bird would always fly straight towards or away from me. I don't often see first-winter Kumlien's as dark as this. I've included another dark first-winter I had at Clifden Harbour back in January 2009 for comparison.

Original views on Monday 24th Jnauary.

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Dark first-winter Kumlien's Gull, Clifden Harbour, January 2009.

Friday, 26 February 2016

The Kumlien's, Skate & Ladybird.

A few more shots of the second-winter Kumlien's Gull that's been hanging around Omey Island now for a while. Spent most of its time sat up on a chimney of a derelict cottage.

Kumlien's Cottage

Second-winter Kumlien's Gull, Omey Island, 10th February 2016.

Martin O'Malley told me that one of the Brent Geese in Kingstown Bay at the end of Sky Road was colour ringed. While I had at least 25 geese a few days later most stayed swimming around in the water which wasn't very helpful for reading rings. Martin also showed me this eggcase along with quite a large dead embryo inside. It definitely a Common Skate of some sort, the first one I've seen since taking an interest in eggcases in recent months. It was still covering in brown bark-like material which normally wears off to relieve the black leathery eggcase below which is just about visible on this one. Clew Bay in county Mayo was a renowned fishing ground for the species once apon a time. Martin also said he used to regularly come across them during his fishing years and says that they're are still a few in the area. Though they were once a common species throughout Ireland they are now listed as endangered by the ICUN due to overfishing which has decimated the population unfortunately. Commerical fishing of the species is now prohibited but are still popular amongst recreational fishermen (rod and line) but are obliged to release them once caught. They have a lifespan of 20 - 100 years. The largest can reach up to 100kg/221 lbs in weight with a 2.4 metre/8 foot "wingspan". Common Skate is now believed to relate to two different species - Flapper Skate and Blue Skate. I'm waiting for news back from the Shark Trust to see if it can be identified down to either species.

Common/Flapper/Blue Skate, Kingstown Bay, Clifden, 15th February 2016.

I had this Eleven-spotted Ladybird out on Tawin Island last week when I was down there. Can't say I've seen one before. I normally only see the common Seven-spotted ones.

Eleven-spotted Ladybird, Tawin Island.

Friday, 8 January 2016

Omey Kumlien's and the NEWS

I've being doing several Non-Estuarine Waterbird Surveys (NEWS) now since December. The survey is due to finish up by the end of the month. I think it may be struggle to try and get all of the sectors that we've signed up due to the incessant poor weather we had for most of December. It has settled down noticeably in the last week and with luck will hold for a while yet. The survey involves walking around a few kilometres of coastline to count all waterbirds using the shoreline. It aims to cover as much of the coastline that isn't covered by the regular Irish Wetland Bird Survey (I-WeBS) and is only undertaken every eight or so years. Connemara as a rule doesn't hold much in quantity or quality of wintering waterbirds even compared to east Galway and Galway Bay for example. Despite this however it's great to get out to stretches of coastline that I only rarely if ever visit. Who knows there's always the very slim possibility of stumbling across an Ivory Gull or a Gyr Falcon. The best bird I've managed to come across while undertaking the survey was a second-winter Kumlien's Gull on Wednesday on Omey Island. Unfortunately I recorded the bird after finishing up the survey and it was just outside of my assigned sector anyway. It was seen slowly flying south over the island after coming from the direction of Lough Fahy. The camera settings weren't quite right so the shots came out very dark and I've had to brighten the shots up a little. This is my first "white-winger" of the winter, hopefully I'll have a few more before the winter is out.

While walking along the coastline it's been a good opportunity to discover other items of interest. I've have found two dead Common Dolphins so far in the Ballyconneely area. The animal below was found today. As can be seen from the shots it was entangled in green fish netting. It's possible that the animal may have become entangled post mortem in inshore waters as it was being washed onshore. It was lightly wrapped around the snout but it was caught tightly at the base of the tail fluke and if it was the case that the animal was entangled while alive it certainly would have resulted in its demise. Dolphins do regularly get caught in commercial fishing nets and usually died from drowning. When found in nets fishermen will usually cut off the tail flukes to remove the dead animal from net rather than cutting the net. In this case this section of netting was cut away so I'm not 100% sure what happened to this unfortunate animal but the fact that it was caught tightly on the tail doesn't look good.

There have been several foreign supertrawlers off the Galway/Mayo coastline over the last month or so. These ships can hoover up a huge tonnage of commercial fish. Large amounts of discards ("collateral damage") are evitable in these operations. These boats have received a lot of bad press here in Ireland recently because they are seen as decimating Irish fish stocks and people would rather see Irish fishermen doing the decimating instead! Nothing is usually said of the very same damage that an Irish fishing ship of a similar scale can do to non-target fish and other marine life.
On another note the amount of plastic refuse which is continually washed up on every single metre of Irish coastline is staggering and depressing in equal measure, the majority of it coming ships of one description or another.