Laughing in the face of the storms
Laughing Gulls are found primarily on the Atlantic coast of North America and the northern part of South America. It is a rare vagrant to Western Europe. The species for me, as a birdwatcher in Ireland, has always meant one of rarity and excitement. The reason for this is that before I started birdwatching in the mid-80's, Jim Wilson found a 1st-winter Laughing Gull in Cobh, which is my hometown. Having not started birdwatching yet, the story of the "Cobh Laughing Gull" told by Jim and others who saw it, always conjured up a feeling of wonder and excietment. This wonderment was further fuelled by pouring over the black & white photographs of the species in the "gull bible" of its day - "GULLS An Identification Guide" by PJ Grant, particularly as Jim's photo of the "Cobh Ross's Gull" from 1985, which I saw, was in the book.
The Laughing Gull still is a very rare bird for Cork, and for Ireland. I had to wait a long time to see my first one in Ireland, missing out on the unprecedented influx in 2005 following a spate of violent hurricanes which whipped up from the Gulf of Mexico along the eastern US and across to Europe. In that October 2005 episode, at least 18, possibly as many as 40, individuals occurred on one day across the UK and Ireland. I was living in Japan at the time and couldn't believe what I was witnessing from reading blogs and reports online. However, it was in July 2010 that I saw my first Laughing Gull in Ireland; a second-summer bird in Ballycastle on the Antrim coast (see photo below). To top it all, it was my 300th species of bird seen on or from the island of Ireland! A nice bird to hit that milestone with.
Roll on January 2014, and following a spate of violent hurricane-force storms ripping up the North Atlantic, a first-winter Laughing Gull is found in Ballycotton, Co. Cork. It is the first record for Cork since the influx of 2005. Happily, the bird stayed around for a long period of time and was still present 2-months later up to 16th March 2014. Luckily for me, as well as the bird staying around, I had planned a trip to Cork in early February 2014, the week after seeing the Pacific Diver in Co. Tyrone. A quick trip to the pier on a cold, wet and grey Friday morning looked like it was not going to pay dividends. There were plenty of gulls about, but no sign of the "Laugher". Norma Gleeson, the finder of the bird, arrived on the pier and we were chatting when the bird appeared right in front of us. The feeling of panic had subsided and was replaced with one of elation and joy. Smiles all around, a few record shots, a few minutes watching it fly by with the binoculars and the naked eye. I had forgotten how small these birds are, no bigger than a Kittiwake. I was thrilled. A Cork "tick" and my first time seeing a Laughing Gull in this plumage. Once that was all done and absorbed, it was time to concentrate on the photographs.
The gull was sometimes in the company of odd companions such as a Grey Heron (not superficially unlike the American Great Blue Heron) and the energetic Pied Wagtail. There were also a swarm of Herring, Great-black Backed and Common Gulls to keep it interesting, with plenty of Kittiwakes and a nice supporting cast of a couple of Glaucous Gulls and a Kumlien's Gull. I spent quite a few hours standing and kneeling on the pier in cold and blustery conditions, ever so aware of the time and having to be elsewhere. The conditions were difficult with low cloud, blustery showers and very little usable light. Concentration was required to ensure the camera settings were set properly for the changing conditions. The bird behaved so well, flying within arms reach of the enthralled bystanders on the pier. Despite the uncomfortable conditions, it was an enjoyable few hours spent with the Laughing Gull. In fact, it was difficult to drag myself away from this magnificent (that's right, magnificent) of gulls.
Addendum: at the time of writing, what is probably the same bird was seen and photographed at Groomsport in Co. Down on 23rd March 2014. A straight line distance between the two ports of Ballycotton and Groomsport is about 360km. Not too far for this trans-Atlantic vagrant. I wonder where this bird will end up next?
Winter Visitors
Snow Buntings are a regular winter visitor to Ireland, and in particular the west, north and east coasts of Ireland. They are much scarcer along the south coast. The area around Dublin Port appears to be a regular wintering haunt each year for a small number of Snow Buntings. Each of the winters since 2008 that I have been living in Dublin, Snow Buntings have been present around Dun Laoghaire piers, Bulloch Harbour and Bull Island. Some have been seen within striking distance of Dublin, such as further south in Bray Co. Wicklow and further north along the beaches of Laytown Co. Meath and and Cruisetown Co. Louth. Whenever Snow Buntings are reported within striking distance of Dublin, I always make a point of going to see them. They are such stunning birds.
Not all Snow Buntings are tame but some are more tame than others. This series of images were taken along Dollymount Strand on the Great North Bull Wall of the Dublin Port/Dublin Bay area, in the company of my good friend SC. I spent 5-6 hours lying down in the sand, hunched along the rocks or kneeling in rotting seaweed to get the photographs, and all the time cursing inconsiderate dog walkers who let their dogs off the lead to blatantly run at any birds along the shoreline. Such an activity is illegal on places such as Dollymount Strand and Bull island as they are both nature reserves and have been tagged Special Protection Areas (SPAs) under EU Law, as well as being a UNESCO Biosphere area. As such, by law, dogs are to be kept on leads at all times. Unfortunately, due to lack of enforcement and lack of a dog warden, dogs run riot and roosting shorebirds get constantly harassed, thus robbing them of critical energy stores required to thrive. In addition, petty thieves have been targeting birdwatchers/photographers, and also breaking into cars, in this area. This means that you have to be aware of your surroundings and so cannot focus 100% on the birds. Crime is, unfortunately, rife along this stretch of the Dublin coastline. A sign of our times.
Despite all that, I was determined not to let those vagaries of society detract from my enjoyment of watching and studying the Snow Buntings.
Pacific Vagrant...the Loon!
Pacific Divers are regular winter visitors around the coast of Japan, particularly around the northern coastline, where I had seen hundreds of them during my tenure there. A couple of birds have been recorded off the Irish and UK coasts in recent years. Whether this is a result of an increasing population pushing east or pushing west to reach the Atlantic Ocean; or whether the decrease in the north polar ice cap allows species such as the Pacific Diver reaching the North Atlantic by coming "over the top"., is unclear A small population of Pacific Diver is believed to have started to populate NE Canda/North America. It is also possible that the birds which have been seen around Ireland and the UK may have come from this area.
When a bird was found on a small loch in Northern Ireland near Cookstown, called Lough Fea, it was quite unexpected and surprising. The bird was first identified in mid-January 2014 by a visiting birdwatcher from the UK. The Lough is a small course-fishing lake with little or not bird life on it. The Pacific Diver was the only large bird on the open water of this very exposed Lough. I had seen Pacific Diver in Ireland before, off Finvarra Point in Co. Clare back in 2010. However, when it emerged that the bird on Lough Fea was showing down to a few meters, I knew I had to get up there to try and get some photographs of this very rare visitor.
I planned a trip at the start of February 2014, typically a good number of weeks into the birds' stay. I went up with a couple of other birdwatchers/photographers. It was a great day out but the bird was proving wary and kept its distance. The weather was clear but bitterly cold. After struggling for 4 hours to get any decent photographs of the bird, our luck changed. The bird changed its behaviour for whatever reason and swam towards the gathered crowd of onlookers and admirers. The light was now in front of us and the glaring, quite harsh reflection off the water was not making it easy. The clouds were gathering and so the light was becoming even more tricky and changeable very quickly. I know it's the usual excuse given, but today it was relevant.
The bird finally played ball and I enjoyed watching it as well as taking photographs of it. The chinstrap was so obvious, even at a great distance. This diagnostic of plumage features with which to separate it from the similar Black-throated Diver. The plumage is very smooth and sleek. Divers, for me, are very beautiful birds, very powerful in appearance yet so graceful. To have one of the rarest for these shores to make such close passes to the gathered crowd was quite something. Once we had our fill, and our disappointment in the paparazzi-type behaviour of some there made us uncomfortable, we headed back for home quite happy with seeing this beautiful bird.
There's something special about...Ivory Gulls
There really is something special about high Arctic species such as Polar Bears, Arctic Foxes, Narwhals, Beluga Whales and....Ivory Gulls. Ivory Gulls have always been a mythical bird for me since I was a young kid. Jim Wilson found a well-marked juvenile bird in Ballycotton, Co. Cork back in January 1980. He inked a fantastic drawing of the bird and it still hangs on the wall at his home. I used to stare at it with wonder when I was a kid, and look at images of the species in Lars Jonsson's books. I never thought I would ever see one, unless I was fortunate enough to travel to the high Arctic to see them and their polar counterparts.
I missed one in Kinsale Co. Cork in 1999 but was lucky to connect with a juvenile bird in March 2009 in Baltimore, Co. Cork (see the image above). It was a dank and dreary day and the last day the bird was seen - haunted doesn't even come close to describe how lucky I was. I have a tendency to wait until very late in a rare bird's stay to twitch it. It is something that has become normal with me these days, for reasons only known to my evil imaginary friend called "Sleep" and the comfort of a warm bed at 4am on a Saturday morning.
With the repetitive storm surges across the North Atlantic, which began in December 2013 and are still ongoing now in February 2014, originating in the channel between North America and Greenland, it was looking good for possible Arctic strays such as Glaucous Gulls, Iceland Gulls, Kumlien's Gulls, and the rarer Thayer's Gull, Ross's Gull and Ivory Gull. Incredibly, an Ivory Gull turned up on Tacumshin Lake in Co. Wexford after the devastating Storm Christine in early January 2014; a great find by Tony Murray. One of the last places one would expect to find an Ivory Gull in Ireland. True to form, I managed to get down to see the bird 3 weeks after it was found. I figured the crowds would have abated at that stage and I might enjoy the bird more, less the madding crowds.
(Canon 500mm; f/4; ISO 2000; 1/100; 0 eV; tripod mounted)
I arrived pre-dawn to constant rain and low, grey cloud cover. Not the ideal really. I was sitting in my car waiting for acceptable lux levels to find themselves in the soupy morning dawn. I got out of the car to be greeted by a couple of like-minded souls, donned my wet gear, put on my camera's wet gear and trundled off across a ploughed field towards the lake edge. At the edge of the field, as I was walking across, were the two like-minded souls giving me the thumbs-up. Happy days. The bird was there. I joined them and could see the Ivory Gull feeding on the by-now famous rotting Porpoise carcass. The bird just glowed in the cold light of the grey dawn. Almost angelic-like (if one believes in such things). I was wet, but I was smiling. I clambered down and the bird didn't move. It was so tame. The light conditions were appalling, which made for difficult photography. Concentrating hard on the fluctuating light conditions in the constant rain was not pleasant. However, it was an Ivory Gull. Who cared!?
(Canon 500mm; f/4; ISO 2000; 1/250; 0 eV; tripod mounted)
It seemed to have a pattern where it would feed for a period of time on the carcass, wander off behind the stump, wash its bill, have a drink and then fly out a bit on the (exceptionally flooded) lake for a wash and then wander off. Then it would return and land on the stump, look around, flop down on the carcass and continue to feed. Repeat. All through the morning it just rained and stayed grey. It was cold, uncomfortable but a mythical Ivory Gull was no more than 20 metres away from me. It was worth the soaking. It was worth constantly changing the camera settings. It was a great learning experience photographing a white bird in such grey and dark conditions.
(f/8; ISO 800; 1/1000; 0 eV; tripod mounted)
Luckily, at one point during the 5 hours I sat there, the sun sort of belched through the clouds for a few minutes allowing some light to be thrown upon the bird. It was nice while it lasted and the only moment in my life when I've seen an Ivory Gull in direct sunlight. It reminded me of a short film that I saw as a child, which has haunted me to this day. The short film is called "All Summer in a Day", based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. The story is about a class of school children on a world of constant rainstorms (much like our winter), where the sun is only visible for one hour every seven years. Google it and you'll get the idea. The day I spent with the Ivory Gull felt like that day on the world of constant rainstorms. So when the sun shone ever so briefly, it was glorious and memorable.
(f/4; ISO 1000; 1/800; tripod mounted)
At one point, after the bird had disappeared for an hour, it arrived again out of nowhere behind me from the east and landed on a hay bale which had been blown in by the recent storms. It was on odd combination of a bird, which normally lives inside the Arctic circle feeding alongside Polar Bears at a seal carcass, sitting on a bale of hay wrapped with mire mesh. It was a surreal day. But then again, seeing an Ivory Gull will always be a surreal experience.
(f/4; ISO 1000; 1/800; 0 eV; tripod mounted)
(f/4; ISO 500; 1/1250; 0 eV; tripod mounted)
Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes)
When news broke in September 2013 that a juvenile Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes) from North America was found at Wexford Wildfowl Reserve in Co. Wexford, I imagined that the bird was going to be visible from either the Tower Hide or through the thick glass of the centre in an area with no access to Joe Public. When I received an email from a friend of mine with phrases such as "Frame-fillers", "within focusing distance", "tamest Legs I've ever seen" were staring back at me from the screen, I was intrigued. The bird was in the ornamental duck pond at the front of the reserve! I had to do a double-take. For those of you (yes, you John) who do not know the layout of the reserve, the ornamental duck pond is the first thing that greets visitors and is generally bereft of any wild birds with the exception of some Mallard or Teal and the odd Dunlin, Snipe and Black-tailed Godwits first thing in the morning. The great thing is that the birds are always close...very close :)
Needless to say, without a decent photograph of Lesser Legs in my portfolio, I headed straight down the following Saturday morning both to clear the cobwebs from a work and study-ravaged brain, and also to secure a photo of the usually wary Lesser Yellowlegs species. Lesser Legs generally breed near ponds in the boreal forest region from Alaska to Quebec and migrate to the Gulf coast of the United States and south to South America. This species is a regular vagrant to western Europe, and the odd bird has wintered in Ireland. My experience of them in Ireland have always been of views through telescopes and very wary, which is unusual for juvenile North American shorebird vagrants which end up on our shores in Autumn.
Upon arrival at the Reserve, I managed to get in through a side entrance before the main reserve was open...but there was no sign of the bird. I have always rode my luck in terms of twitching birds, heading down a few days or even a few weeks after they have been initially found. I was now beginning to think that this strategy had finally back-fired. I had checked the muddy area to the back of the buildings with my binoculars but no joy. I figured it may have been feeding in one of the channels, out of view.
Then, I heard the distinctive double-noted "tu-tu" call and looked up to see the bird fly past within 10 feet of me and land on the edge of the pond in glorious sunshine on the far side. I slowly made my way around and the bird just continued to preen and bask in the early morning light. Bingo...
I spent the next 6 hours with the bird as it flew back and forth between the ornamental pond and the muddy channels at the back of one of the buildings. The light varied from bright sunshine and blue skies to overcast grey cloud. I generally set the camera settings to f/8.0, ISO 200-320, 1/800-1/200 and -0.33 eV. I also used fill-flash with the Better Beamer. The flash was set to fully manual, set at -2, full power output and the camera set at 1/200 at f/8.0. I think the settings for the flash worked well in bright light and delivered a nice texture and detail to the images. In grey and overcast conditions, I am not sure if I got it right, so I need to work on that again.
It was a great privilege to have spent time with this bird. It stayed for a further two days on the Reserve and was not since subsequently. No doubt, at least I hope, it headed south and to warmer climes.
I would be interested to know which image you like, so please leave a comment letting me know. Thanks!