Bardsey's Wildlife

Sunday 30 July 2023

With counts of many thousands of Cory's Shearwaters of Southern and western Ireland and tens of thousands of Scilly and Cornwall on Saturday I decided that the order of the day was seawtaching again...

Seawatching in style - Rain didn't stop play!!!

I decided not to go out tagging Manxies overnight, but to get up early and go seawatching as the forecast was for moderate to strong, 20-30 mph winds from the Southwest. I began watching at 0645 and was faced with a constant stream of Manxies for the first half hour and very little else passing through the moderate sea and with broken cloud and no rain visibility was good. There was some cloud to the north making the Manxies look very dark at a distance. Manxies were passing at about 2-300 per minute (15,000 per hour) and were near impossible to get any sort of accurate count of. Thinking that we could have a record count on our hands if they continued at this rate all morning, suddenly someone turned off the tap and number fell to about 50 per minute, and then even fewer soon after. By now it was much easier to see other species, as up to now it had just been a total Manx fest. I had seen two Fulmars and 3 Gannets with the Manxies in full swing and just as they slowed down, I managed to find the first Balearic Shearwater of the season heading south at close range – 3-400 yards offshore (900 yards form me). Slightly buzzing I continued watching and saw a few more Fulmars and Gannets and three Common Scoter (another first for the autumn). Then at 0743, an hour into my seawatch I picked up a big shearwater off the north end of the island, about 2 to 2.5 miles away. Its loose languid and unhurried flight action was the thing that I noticed first about it rather than any plumage detail at that distance. My immediate thought was this looks like a Cory's! I immediately zoomed from 40x to about 60x on my scope and lost the bird whilst trying to refocus! Fortunately, about 20 seconds later I picked it up again as it continued south fairly briskly, with its slow wing beats (compared to the stiff rapid beats of a Manxy) it was fairly easy to keep track of. It came closer and closer to the island and at closest was about 800 yards offshore (1300 yards from me), just to the west of Carreg yr Honwy. I watched the bird all in for about 5 minutes before I lost it behind one of the buildings close to me. Everything pointed towards my gut reaction being correct... It was a Cory's Shearwater

The bird flew and glided on fairly bowed wings with them held forwards, the carpel being in line with the head at times. It moved south fairly quickly, and on occasion did a couple of very big shears looping much higher than the Manxies.

Cory's Sketch (C) SDS

The underside of the bird was pure white with the exception of a dark boarder around the tips of the wings. There was no signs of any dark marks on the underwings nor belly thus eliminating Great Shearwater. The upperside was a mid- greyish brown colour, but looked darker when it was further away, possibly due to cloud cover/shadow where it was. The tips of the upper wings were the darkest part of the wings. There was a darkish area possibly across the coverts, similar in tone to the wing tips. The head was hooded and not clean white like a Fulmar, with what looked like a dark mask, which was only visible when the scope was zoomed up to 70x. I looked long and hard for the bill colour and could see the bill which looked pale and not black like the Manxies did. I could not determine the colour. Fulmar was excluded from the Identification process by the bird having longer looking narrower wings, lacking the white head and neck of Fulmar and the overall jizz and flight pattern. Immature Gannet was also eliminated by the shape of the bird, lacking the long pointed neck and head and pointed wings and tail. Great Shearwater was eliminated by the lack of contrast on the upper side around the neck and head area as the bird did not appear capped and also the underwings were completely clean looking. Scopoli’s Shearwaters was not eliminated at the time on plumage details as the exact detail of the underside of the primaries was not visible on a moving bird at that range, but it was considered unlikely! That said there have been a good number in UK waters in the past week!

A short time after (0810) I picked up a pale grey wader with a distinctive flight. Its dark wings and masked appearance, coupled with it regularly landing on the sea led me to ID it as a Grey Phalarope. At 0911 a Storm Petrel winged its way Southend a pale adult Arctic Skua went the same way about 15 mins later.

Six hours after I began seawtaching I had logged 10,406 Manxies, another good count!

One of the highlights though was seeing six common Dolphins playing and splashing amongst a large mixed feeding flock of gulls and shearwaters.

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Click to see inside!

Edited by Mike Archer, Mark Grantham, Peter Howlett and Steve Stansfield and published by T & AD Poyser, this fabulous book describes how much has changed since the first edition of Bird Observatories in Britain and Ireland was published in 1976. There are detailed accounts of the history and work carried out at each of the 18 observatories, with personal accounts by wardens and staff of the excitement of discovering a rarity, watching thousands of migrants attracted to a lighthouse after dark, and the pleasure and experiences that working at some of the country’s most remote and beautiful locations can bring. Click the picture of the book to see inside or to buy your copy.

Migrants

Being sited on the main migration route of many species, Bardsey (or Ynys Enlli in Welsh) is a well-known site for migrant birds, turning up many scarcities and rarities, as well as large numbers of common migrants. The island’s list now stands on 326, after the recent addition of Citrine Wagtail in October 2012.

Although Bardsey’s reputation for rare birds may not quite match that of some observatories, it is almost certainly the best site in Wales for rarities. Among Bardsey’s rarer visitors are the first Summer Tanager (1957) and Yellow Warbler (1964) to have been recorded in Britain and Ireland, as well as American vagrants such American Bittern, Sora, Kildeer, Spotted Sandpiper, Grey-cheeked Thrush, American Robin, Song Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Red-eyed Vireo, Black-and-white Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Blackpoll Warbler. To add to this impressive list of rarities, Black-winged Stilt, Lesser Yellowlegs, Lanceolated Warbler, River Warbler, Western Orphean Warbler, Booted Warbler, Blyth’s Reed Warbler, Eyebrowed Thrush, Thrush Nightingale, Red-flanked Bluetail, Isabelline Wheatear, Black-eared Wheatear, Collared Flycatcher, Blyth’s Pipit, Pine Bunting, Rock Bunting, Yellow-breasted Bunting and White-throated Sparrow have all been recorded.

Besides the rarities, Bardsey regularly attracts large numbers of weary migrants during 'fall' conditions in Spring and Autumn, largely a consequence of the fully operational Bardsey Lighthouse. In 2011, for example, a single grounding of migrants resulted in over 1000 Willow Warblers making groundfall on the island in August. In the not-so-distant past, a single attraction of 40,000 Redwings occurred in late October at the end of the last century.

Breeding birds

Bardsey is home to some 26, 000 pairs of Manx Shearwaters, which can be heard on dark nights from mid-March to August. They breed in their excavated burrows, which are scattered all over the island. Chough is the most important species of conservation concern, with between four to eight pairs nesting around the coastal cliffs most years, and a wintering flock of up to 50 individuals. A pair of Peregrines breed on the island, and a 1-2 pair of Ravens also nest most years. There are several species which nest only occasionally, such as Sparrowhawk and Little Owl, along with Afro-Palearctic migrants like Sedge Warbler, Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler. Up to ten pairs of Stonechats can nest in the isolated gorse patches around the island, along with many Linnets and Meadow Pipits. Corncrakes were once a common breeder on the island, although since 1970 there have been no confirmed pairs nesting. In recent years the likes of Lapwing, Yellowhammer, House Sparrow and Starling have also all become extinct as breeding species. In contrast, Shelduck, Puffin, Long-eared Owl, Grasshopper Warbler and Goldcrest have been added to the breeding bird list since 1998.

Ringing

Ringing is a very important part of the observatory’s role on the island. Since 1953, the observatory has ringed over 315,00 birds of 198 species. The highest number ringed in a single year was 1988, with a total of 11, 301 birds ringed of 93 species. There have been many days in the observatory’s history when several hundred birds have been ringed in one day; these occasions have mostly involved breeding seabirds, although these numbers can also easily occur with migrant species.

Lepidoptera

A total of 561 species of moths have been recorded on the island. Bardsey is not an overly good location for scarce moths, although the existence of Thrift Clearwings (Nationally scarce) has been established on the Thrift plants around the coast in recent years, after first being recorded in the years 1980 and 1996. Migrant moths arrive in small numbers every year, for example the annual arrival of Hummingbird Hawkmoths in the autumn; rarer immigrants in the past have included Death’s Head Hawkmoths, Vestals, Crimson Speckled and Red-necked Footman.

In recent years, a greater emphasis has been placed on recording and identifying the so-called ‘micro-moths’, which has resulted in the finding of 41 new species for Bardsey since 2011. In 2012, the coastal subspecies of Eana penziana (E.p.colquhounana) was re-found on the island, which was the first time that this Nationally Scarce species had been recorded on Bardsey since 1966. Apotomis semifasciana is also amongst the scarcer species of micro-moths to inhibit the island (also Nationally Scarce).

Butterflies are present on the island in small numbers, with species such as Common Blue, Small Copper and Small Tortoise-shell being the most common. A scarcer breeding species is the Grayling, which can be found in small numbers on the top of the mountain. Migrant butterflies such as Painted Lady can arrive in their hundreds, although other migrants such as Clouded Yellow and Dark-green Fritillary are quite rare.

Bardsey's Wildlife

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Sunday 30 July 2023

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